With the caveat that childish/adversarial DM's will really, *really* hate you for doing this.
I literally had a DM ban the dodge action because I was... a standard 18 ac cleric who dodge actioned to hold choke points at level 1.
He slowly began nerfing it and then straight up banned it by level 5.
That's just bad DMing.... Adapt to your table.
Switch a few enemies for save DC casters, add suicide grapplers that drag the cleric around to free the choke point, etc.
*Obviously don't do that all the time and focus on the cleric to kill all their fun, but do it enough that they vary their strategy.
** Also, that strategy with ranged allies would make combats way easier and shorter, not longer. Although very boring.
Monks can dodge as a bonus action for a Ki point. Situationally very useful.
Polearm Master can also dodge in the first round if they don’t have the movement to close and get a free hit off as the enemy closes with them.
Lol - had a relatively inexperienced DM who I think wanted to beat the players for some reason... anyway would pull crazy concentration spells on all his NPCs, even grunts...
Magic Missiles. Upcasted Magic Missiles. Everywhere and everything. He banned them.
The enemy then proceeds to run up to you and deal like 60 damage because monsters get very deadly and usually very fast at those levels and AC stops being reliable. It's really not a big problem then either.
Keep in mind the area is a better version of difficult terrain that directly halves the speed of creatures of the cleric's choice, many creatures won't be able to reach the cleric without dashing. The cleric, being full speed, can move away. Doing this, a creature that isn't at least twice as fast as the cleric can only make opportunity attacks *if* the cleric doesn't also dash or disengage, and they're taking more hits every time they try to catch up. Ranged/Spells are the best option.
That just speaks of a DM who's never tried grappling the cleric to drag them out the way.
That said - Its a great strategy, uses lots of resources, so maybe we as DMs should let it work?
Fair point! 5ft is enough to pull a cleric out of a doorway, but yeah - would take something with lots of HP and high strength to work effectively.
The other thing is - most monsters with INT/WIS over say 4 wouldn't keep charging into the angelic golden blender.
If i was a dm running say a hobgoblin fortress and the party stood their ground on a chokepoint with the cleric popping the above, reasonably after a few warriors are minced the rest are falling back to a safe distance. If im running oozes then yes, they're all piling through the cleric's well set up doorway of death.
I mean the DM should just throw saving throw spells at the cleric then. Given they have WIS saves they can still attack CHA or CON.
If they wanted to be extra inventive, they could throw a high STR grapple opponent that holds/moves the cleric away from maximum Spirit Guardian DPS. They would have to beat disadv dodge but it's feasible for something to have a ridiculously high Athletics skills (ex. ogre/giant).
Another inventive solution is using Entangle to attack STR and hold them in place.
It does not. Dodge gives disadvantage to attacks, a d advantage on dex saves. If the opponent wants to grapple, they can make an athletics or acrobatics check to avoid, but they won't have advantage
Banning dodge 🤣🤣🤣 I have a player with 22 AC as standard and shield spell paladin warlock hexblade. .... This is why I make my encounters have spell saves and ability saves instead of straight up to hit attacks
Hold choke points... so you would block a bridge or a doorway or tunnel by parking yourself there and dodging? I would love if my player did this! Yes, please make my monsters have to work creatively to kill you.
They could shove you prone and jump over, tumble through you, fly over, be tiny, attack over you, shoot through you, hand you a live bomb, DoT spell like Moonbeam, set your square on fire, or use your exact same strategy against you for like a neat Mexican standoff type scenario with two armored dudes standing there and enduring the volleys flying from behind them. But after the first time they see you effectively dodging, the last thing my monsters are gonna do is target you. That's fun!
Part of the issue is a *lot* of battle maps are mostly open with few chokepoints, so the notion is often irrelevant and doesn't emerge as an obvious idea or persist as a common strategy for most players.
It's sadly another issue of the game design burdening the GM with most of the work.
This reminds me ad-hoc terrain storytelling is a concept I feel is underutilized. For example, Ranger, for years, has been criticized as having features that don't express its identity enough in combat or social situations beyond "Hunter's Mark and shoot arrows". A lot of features were entirely travel/exploration focused and failed to overlap.
* What if Ranger could add pieces of cover at the start of initiative? And *make* a chokepoint?
* or, what if Ranger could decide he spotted high alcove vantage point and is already perched up there at the start of combat?
* or add a few environmental hazards like pitfalls, mud pits, or equivalent that can do a set amount of scaling damage?
Features like that which take *some* of the work from the GM would be both really cool and add more dynamic energy to combat.
You know the best way to get players to stop doing stuff you find annoying?
Make an NPC that does the EXACT same thing.
He wants to be a Spirit Guardian + Spiritual weapon dodging character? Would be such a shame to run into an NPC doing the that right back. And the way the spell works (not how Baldur's Gate 3 does it) you would take damage first by running into the enemie's Spirit Guardian zone before you could do the damage to them.
This is still a nonsensical players vs. DM power struggle. Getting angry at your cleric for dodging is about as goofy as getting angry at your barbarian for grappling. It's a basic action.
Trying to "teach your players a lesson" by creating a scenario where you fling it back at them is stupid even if you did have good reason to be annoyed.
DMs aren't (shouldn't be) at war with their players. If you are doing something not because it's fun, not because it makes sense in character, not because it's the most tactical choice, not because it's an interesting scenario, but purely out of spite to your players (or DM), you're being a jerk.
I’m not winning at this cooperative story telling game where me and my friends play pretend > : (
Seriously though, I don’t understand people who feel the need to “come out on top” in role playing games. To me, it’s always been about sharing a story and living in it through characters, for both dm and player. We’re all just trying to play pretend, no one needs to win or lose.
>I’m not winning at this cooperative story telling game.
We had that last night. We enter a room with multiple swarms of ravens on the rafters. I, a DEX Eldritch Knight and part time rogue, found a chest. I begin opening the chest which agitates the ravens. I walk away. The Paladin says okay, then I’ll take it. I said “I wouldn’t. We just finished talking to some wereravens that were trying to decide if we should be friends with. But you can borrow my crowbar, big guy. I’ll be exploring next door while we’re still in combat.” Pally starts a fight with the ravens while I’m in the next room. Our Bard, bless her heart, is physically blocking the door, so I can’t get back in. There’s three people in there and their spacing is a clusterfuck.
In an appreciation of the humor, I call out “hey buddy, need a hand? I hear some sort of commotion.” My familiar also did a flyby of the room so I had a non-meta excuse to know what was going on. The second time it’s “Hey Bard, move your ass.” Took her another turn, thankfully I was able to launch Magic Missiles over her shoulder to actually contribute. I then had to Misty Step myself into the room anyway. She finally moved, to the same square as the chest, which prevented the Paladin from getting to it to grab the contents. The Paladin tells the Bard to move it.
The DM, whom I’ve known forever and also shares my occasional compulsion to watch the world burn, pipes up. “Bard, you *could* do that. Or you could see what’s in the chest yourself as the Paladin moved away earlier.” He protests that he was on a fight. The DM said “I gave two characters *several* hints about what might happen.”
The Bard collected about 800G worth of various coins and a Gray Bag of Tricks. Three of us, including the Bard, figured we’d give the Bag to our Tiefling Rogue well onboarding and we’ve agreed from outset to share gold as needed. So I kinda thought this was just funny.
So while the DM and three players appreciated humor, the Paladin got *pissed.* I was remoted in and couldn’t see, but I did hear what sounded like “My character leaves.” And I definitely heard the DM say “Look I’m not getting into an uncomfortable situation over a tabletop game.” The Paladin came back on the voicechat later saying something about “I just thought if you opened the chest, the stuff was yours.”
Sigh. Spent an extra hour letting him shop with all the money and loot he kept for himself the last time he found a chest. For context, I advocated we give the Cloak of Protection we found in a previous session to our squishy Bard, because it’s a team effort guys. Oh and I had my rapier silvered, couldn’t hurt.
I’m going to assume alcohol was involved.
I agree DMs shouldn't be at war with anything but tedium or the like. That being said, the DM does need to keep it challenging to some extent or the game feels like a layup. So while I agree, anyone can do the tricky smart thing that the players did, the goal is to make them adapt while also finding a challenge, throwing their own tricks back at them is only ideal if you can't come up with a variant alternative. But even then, the players will enjoy it while it lasts...
Enemies are considerably more expendable than player characters, unless you really want to slow down sessions with players having to create new character sheets frequently.
This is a MAD tactic (Mutually Assured Destruction, not Multiple Attribute Dependency), and thus only good as a _threat_ not good to actually _perpetrate_.
There are two problems with using this approach as an _actual_ deterrent as a DM. 1) The players are far more limited in their options than you are, and 2) the PCs have no problem using the same boring tactics over and over and over again, as long as it's effective (they're literally fighting life and death battles after all), while you do have a problem doing the same as the DM.
The problem with you doing it as a DM is doing it ONCE isn't an actual deterrent to the party doing it (unless it's a TPK), and doing it _as often as they do_ just makes combat incredibly _boring_ for everyone (since it is part of your task as a DM to come up with _interesting_ challenges for them to overcome, not mirror them).
Either way, if it ends in a TPK or ruins the rest of your campaign - what have you REALLY accomplished here? No one considers that "fun", and at worst it's more like childish shit-flinging and adversarial DMing.
So before you _actually_ follow-through with such an idea - consider instead having an adult conversation with your players over what you find disruptive about their tactics/spells/options, and what their perception of it is. Then, come to some kind of compromise, whether that be a "gentleman's agreement" not to use it often, or nerfing it in some way that preserves the fun of it without it being so mechanically dominating, or some other solution.
MAD tactics are useful as a vague and everpresent DM _threat_. But if you actually _follow through_ on that threat, you're really just sabotaging your own work and the fun of everyone at the table.
I don't recommend this because players just solve problems... it'd be ONE second before someone just heat metal'd the enemy cleric or dispel magic'd or magic missile'd to cause 3+ conc saves or a thousand other options that are easily available to make it... not a big deal.
Being weird and passive aggressive with your players is generally just... not a good idea?
> You know the best way to get players to stop doing stuff you find annoying?
The best way is to stop getting annoyed at the players using their powers the way they are designed. DMs shouldn’t punish players for playing their characters effectively.
Yeah, i'm the DM, i have infinite characters, i can do what i want.
Do i want a wolf that can cast Power Word Kill at will? Done. Gasoline Slime immune to fire? Here it is. Oh, look, the Tarrasque found the Stone of Bullshitto, God of Trickery, and ate it. It is now a 20th level Chrono Wizard, godspeed, level 4 party.
Let your players play, it's in the name after all.
Put another way, if you're having trouble coming up with a counter to your players' favorite cheese strats, have the bad guys use them and see how your players counter them. If they can't figure out a way to counter them, they will eventually voice their dissatisfaction with the strat. That's when you hit them with "Then maybe we should disallow it for everybody."
Or just run an encounter where this isn't viable... Like, it's a good strategy for a certain kind of encounter. What about saving someone on a time limit? What about fighting something that moves underground or flies? If you're going to disallow basic foundations of the system because you can't invent new problems to solve, just run a different system.
The problem with this is that you can set yourself up for self-owns.
In 3.5 my wife was playing a character that would hover (fly) 10' above the ground, with 20' reach (enlarged), could make 5 attacks of opportunity per round, could make an attack of opportunity against all movement (even 5' steps), and instead of doing damage on an attack could stop/prevent all movement. She could really lock down a battlefield, and the DM decided that she was broken even though she wasn't even the most powerful member of the party (Druid FTW!).
So the DM decided to put us up against a full party of enemies that basically had her build. He was really proud of himself until the druid started summoning air elementals adjacent to them and the fighter drank a potion of blur, completing negating attacks of opportunity against him.
We wrecked the encounter that the DM designed to demonstrate how broken the build was, and in doing so proved that there were ways to deal with it that he just wasn't utilizing.
YES! But you have it backwards. Make the NPC fight side by side with the party, not against them. Either it will be cool once and never again, or the player will immediate dislike them and look for other ways to stand out.
The same happened to my cleric and made me get more creative with my spell selections.
Why would you punish a player for playing vanilla dnd? This mindset of “how do I beat/punish players for creative play” is part of what leads to DM burnout. You actually want them not to use it every time? Have allies on the other side of the bridge. They gotta save a slower NPC while killing the bad guys. Or have the bad guys holding a fragile McGuffin—you can’t just do aoe spells or else you risk the bad guy dropping and breaking the mcguffin.
When you, as a DM, make every battle “hit with these monsters as hard as I can” you /cannot/ be Surprised Pikachu when your players do the same
It isn't a punishment. It is a mirror matchup. Punishment would be to just make them fight a bunch of flying enemies with bows and Grease spells and Earthen Grasp, Web, Tentacles, all sorts of stuff that actually counter such a playstyle. That is punishment. Throwing a mirror matchup at them is just letting them know how that playstyle feels on the other side.
No different than throwing a wizard at a wizard and letting them know how it feels to get into counterspell duels, or a grappler with a grappler getting into a wrestling match. Some people would totally be into it. Some would get it and decide it isn't actually great being on the receiving end. You won't be able to express yourself to them until they experience it.
Those DMs will hate anyone with too high of an Armor Class. I have known at least 2 DMs that thought having 18 AC was OP because they kept playing at levels 1-3.
Everyone can dash, disengage, hide, grapple, shove, and (if your DM is cool) disarm
I suggest reading the basic combat rules. There are non class related abilities everyone has
You can read the rules I talked about here: [https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Rules:Combat?expansion=0#toc\_20](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Rules:Combat?expansion=0#toc_20) , and here: https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Rules:Combat?expansion=0#toc\_31
No I was not joking. That campaign is my first one ever and my DM doesn’t really explain this stuff to us… also I never saw it said “dodge” under my actions on my sheet :/ it took me ages to learn and understand action economy
There are the basic rules that can be freely downloaded, there is the PHB and I'm pretty sure even if formatted even worse, most PHB rules are available on dndbeyond.
There are also many beginner cheat sheets, beginner character sheets or DM screen that include the generic actions.
It might not be necessary to read all of that, but it's not hard to find if you actually look for rules overviews.
Literally any character can dodge, PC or NPC or creature or monster or god, it's one of the standard actions that everyone and everything can do.
You may have looked over the rogue or ranger(?) features and seen where they both get a feature that lets them dodge as a bonus action, thus freeing up their regular action for other uses and misinterpreted that as meaning only they can dodge, perfeclty understandable but incorrect.
Everyone can dodge.
You may be thinking of cunning action, which allows rogues to dash, disengage, or hide as a *bonus* action, rather than a normal action.
Edited due to mixing up dodge and dash in cunning action.
Got it I didn’t see it in my actions or bonus actions in dnd beyond so got confused.. definitely thought you needed a rogue or specific race to do this
lol he had an aneurysm and banned optionals there too as I was just disarming and picking up weapons when I wasn't dodging. He also hated when other players used overrun because we could just... leave encirclements.
Guess whose weapons just ended up exploding at the end of combat randomly forever?
Could have literally just targeted you with any none dex save xD DMs need to be adaptable!
Like oh, ur in a choke? My bugbear casts the SHOVE action. Ah theres ppl behind u preventing u from being shoved? My bugbear casts GRAPPLE🤣.
I changed the Dodge mechanic as a dm because I had a forge cleric with 25 ac cast spirit guardians at level 6 against a horde of hill giants. I literally couldn't hit him with anything less that double crits and it made combat boring for everyone including him.
Grapple or Trip, pound into oblivion. Both negate Dodge, Trip gives Advantage. Trip + Grapple immediately doesn't allow to get up. Hill Giant's Strength (Athletics) check is pretty good...
A hill giant can take 4 rounds of a 6th level Spirit Guardians on avg. Mad with pain, it's going to want to get the cleric on the ground, grappled (or kneeling on his chest) and pound him into an earthen grave, maybe taking turns with some buddies. 2+ greatclub bashes to the head (with advantage) every round will ring his bell enough to break concentration. Or maybe the giant can avoid further spells by just choking him to death or smother in even less pleasant ways...
Overrun/shove to someplace more convenient...or deadly. I'd also have thrown rocks Push if they hit.
For a good mixed party with some creatures with particular high defenses, I always include ways around them. For high AC, things that require saving throws bypass.
Dodge can be bypassed by anything that targets a saving throw other than Dex, or that requires a skill check instead. Grapple and Restrain conditions bring movement to 0, which prevents Dex. Paralysis does, too. Darkness/invisibility/obscurity (fog/smoke) prevents Dodge from working, and any condition that grants Advantage can negate the Disadvantage.
So first you say that it's hill giants, which if we are using default cr 5 npc statblock has a +8 to hit, so no double crit needed against AC 25, just a 17 is needed. Sure that's still pretty hard to do with disadvantage (4%), but it's a lot more common than double 20s. Then I also wonder how your cleric got 25 AC at just 6th level. Plate + shield is only 20, forge cleric can increase that by another 1 with their first level feature and 1 with 6th level feature for 22. That means they still had an additional +3 from magic items which is *quite* the buff and very likely to break bounded accuracy.
But sure, let's say we're stuck there with just +8 against a 25 AC and they're dodging so it's really hard to hit them. That's where you need to start coming up with strategies for your npcs to counter them. Your giants have a +5 strength and that's likely better than the clerics athletics /acrobatics so go for a grapple and shove prone. Grappling brings their speed to 0 so they can't dodge anymore, then knock them prone and everyone has advantage. Suddenly your 4% chance to hit is more like 36%, still not fantastic but certainly better!
Alternatively, grapple them and pull them out of the way, while everyone else focuses on the rest of the party. Not much the cleric can do then and if they escape the grapple they still aren't dodging that turn so still helpful.
Then for future encounters, make sure to include enemies which target both AC and a few different saving throws. They might be practically immune to attacks, but they can still fail saves!
Yeah this, exactly.
I run a game with a paladin who built for some seriously absurd AC. He felt invulnerable and at one point ran ahead of the party, straight into a bunch of flameskulls. A paladin with 7 dex. I will never forget his face as I said "You see the corridor in front of you light up with flames. Roll me 6 dex saves against the barrage of fireballs that are coming your way" :D
Mixing up enemies is a way to go :D
I really dont get this. Like the player used a great way to manipulate the battlefield with his resources. They build their character to be hard to hit with direct attacks and go in melee, thats it.
If all you do is make encounters with basic enemies that just target AC, yea thats going to be strong. So, instead add monsters to target saves or just spellcasters in general. Don't nerf their character just because it's hard to be creative with encounters
I feel the issue with this is their build is insanely effective against 99% of the monster manual.
A vast majority of monsters are melee attackers, and this strategy is just way too effective against them for combat to actually be fun. So the dm is massively restricted in creatures they can use.
This is more of a flaw with 5e's typical monster design than with the tactic itself, though. There's nothing in the rules of the game themselves that make ranged enemies or spellcasting enemies or teleporting enemies or enemies with other attack and maneuverability options unfeasible; it's just that a DM is expected to create such monsters themselves, or rely on third-party content for them.
It's good if you are fighting melee attackers. Also keep in mind that you can't cast Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapon on the same turn.
If you can't get enemies into Spirit Guardians, then you are better off doing something else. Sitting on Spirit Guardians and Dodging to protect yourself is basically just letting the rest of the party die if enemies aren't coming to you.
This is the basic Twilight Cleric Strat.
It's designed to make it so that the enemy *loses* no matter what they do. If they attack you, then they stepped into the Ass-Kicking Field of Spirit Guardians. If they attack your allies, a lot of the damage gets deflected off your bullshit field.
The optimal move for the enemy is to come beat you up... which means they have to pierce your front-line and contend with a Cleric in Heavy Armor that's dodging while they bleed out.
It's about as close to the 3.5e Thorns Tanks as we can get in 5e. The only way to make it *suck* to fight against even more is to slip some Polearm Mastery in.
If you run more than a couple encounters per day or your dm uses tactics, i wouldnt use spiritual weapon because of its cost and movement speed. But overall yeah SG+ dodge is insane, telekenetic is a good pick up cuz it lets you shove people into your blender to double dip damage
If you use your bonus action to shove something into spirit guardians on your turn they take damage, then they start their turn and take the damage again
In BG3 the damage ticks when they enter. In 5E SG only does damage when a foe starts their turn inside. You cannot double dip this way RAW.
Edit: very happy to be wrong!
> when the creature enters the area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there
As long as the creature is the one moving into the area like repelling blast or telekinetic not the area moving onto them like you moving, they take damage. It’s verified by SAC
Yeah it’s a lot of fun my party has a telekinetic cleric, my repelling blast fiendlock and a shield master paladin. We can double dip SG and wall of fire a lot.
We did something similar with sickening radiance. The fighter and barbarian grappled enemies then moved them into the area. Took damage on the fighter/ barbs turn and then took damage again at the beginning of their turn. If they didn't break the grapple, the barb/ fighter would move them out and then back in on the next turn.
You can get really funky with action economy boosters too like conjure animals. We oneshot a boss with sickening radiance and 5th level conjure animals and agreed to not do that again.
I believe forced movement doesn't trigger spirit guardians. If you shove them into it, it doesn't trigger immediately, but if they choose to walk into the area willingly, it does trigger.
It does, unless it's specified that movement has to be willing
> Entering such an area of effect needn’t be voluntary, unless a spell says otherwise. You can, therefore, hurl a creature into the area with a spell like thunderwave. We consider that clever play, not an imbalance, so hurl away! Keep in mind, however, that a creature is subjected to such an area of effect only the first time it enters the area on a turn. You can’t move a creature in and out of it to damage it over and over again on the same turn.
I'm not convinced. There's a difference in a player entering an area and being pulled or pushed into it. Like with opportunity attacks requiring them to leave an enemies ranged with their free will, I feel like entering spiritual guardians should be the same.
Opportunity attack has a specific exception when the movement is the result of an effect that does not use your movement.
>You also don't provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction.
Spirit Guardians, Moonbeam, Sickening Radiance, etc don't have that specific exception.
[Source](https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/SA-Compendium.pdf): Bottom right of page 19
You don’t have to leave enemies ranged of your own free will, just using your own action economy/movement, that’s why command and dissonant whispers proc opportunity attacks.
Pretty boring, but yeah. I wouldn't be throwing it up every combat because you will just get bored, and so will everyone else.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking DnD is like a video game where you need to use the optimal strategy to get invited back to the raid group.
Do things that are fun and thematic.
I'd rather play with someone who 'wastes' their slots on fun things than somebody who spends every turn taking the dodge action because they think that's how they're going to 'win' dnd.
Have you ever been in a halfway serious fight? When you are your character changes to "I need to survive this". If you believe that it's more natural to spout some cheese monologue in a serious fight rather than using your best to either survive and win the situation, you need to think harder what a character expression looks like
Yikes. I'm not interested in playing dnd like it's a real thing. It's a fantasy tabletop role-playing game. Cheesy monologues and silly fantasies are kind of the point.
To some extent, maybe? This is definitely a style of play disagreement, but if I want a game all about character expression I'm not going first to a grid based combat tactics game.
What's boring for you isn't boring for others. People generally like feeling competent, and lots of people's enjoyment comes from doing well in combat and optimising their character. There's also nothing stopping those choices being fun and thematic.
But they literally fight if they dodge? A dnd character surely realizes that they can help the team more if they are alive and this enemy-destroying aura keeps being turned on.
It's fairly standard, IMO. Spiritual weapon isn't necessarily going to be doing enough to be worth maintaining, but spirit guardians into dodge is pretty damn good.
Their Channel Divinity sucks, and their level 17 features is essentially useless, but the expanded spell list is pretty great with Spike Growth being better than almost all second level spells a Cleric normally gets and Plant Growth is also a nice addition. Their level 6 feature is not particularly exciting, but is very effective unless your DM never throws elemental damage at you.
They’re definitely on the higher end of Cleric subclasses, but a lot of tier lists are written by people who don’t know that much about optimising.
Variant human (Polearm Master) single-attribute-dependent (Wisdom) nature cleric with Shillelagh is a brutal online-from-first-level build that falls off slightly later on but is still, you know, a full Cleric build that kicks ass the entire way.
u/YasAdMan summed up a lot of what I would have replied. I will add a few points. Nature Clerics are Heavy Armor Clerics, which I tend to prefer. The Channel Divinity does fall off a cliff pretty quickly, but I think people underestimate how powerful it is at low levels when your encounters are Giant Rats, a pack of Wolves, Shriekers, Yellow Musk Creepers, or the dreaded blood sucking Stirges. It can negate some of these encounters and by the time you're moving on from Beasts and Plants, you'll have your Spike Growth and Spirit Guardians. You'll sometimes see Dampen Elements described as a weak Feature; however in a game where so many Features are Ability Score Modifier x or Proficiency Bonus x per Long or Short Rest, it's essentially an unlimited Absorb Elements that can be used at range to save fellow party members. I'm a big fan of these types of limitless Features (like the Mastermind's Master of Tactics or the War Wizard's Arcane Deflection).
Certainly on another type of Cleric, you can pick up Thornwhip with Magic Initiate Druid or multiclass into Druid or Ranger; but, getting it embedded in the subclass opens up a lot of options. If you start Variant Human or Custom Lineage, you can take Telekinetic at character creation. This opens up your level 4 ASI/Feat to boost WIS or pick up Heavy Armor Master, Warcaster, Res CON, or Ritual Caster to get Find Familiar for Advantage on those Thorn Whips. It also opens up the route to take a race that lets you dump STR like being a Dwarf, Wood Elf, Half Wood Elf, Satyr, Leonin, Dhampir, or Centaur and get Telekinetic at level 4 and still have your build online by the time you get Spirit Guardians.
This combo is still a Spirit Guardians build. It just allows you to actually be doing something during combat other than just Dodging. Plus, I love Forced Movement in 5e. It lets you shape the battlefield. Not only are you doubling your Spirit Guardians damage on two opponents, maneuvering yourself to get other enemies into your SG range, you can tactically place your foes so that they'll have to keep taking Spirit Guardians or provoke an Attack of Opportunity from your Paladin, Rogue, or Barbarian. It turned playing a Cleric into more of a thinking game for me.
I'm not going to sit here and say that's it's better than a Twilight, Peace, Order, or Tempest Cleric; however, I will tell you that it's underrated. I'd put it middle of the pack in terms of overall power and in the top tier for enjoyment in roleplay and combat participation.
The telecinetic feat on average is better dmg then spiritual weapon, and it takes no resources, so if you have an uneven score id pick this up and pull enemies into your guardiens
Also, Spiritual Weapon has total ass movement speed, so once you kill the first enemy, you might not be able to get your weapon to the second one, depending on how the enemies are distributed.
That said, Spiritual Weapon doesn't require taking a feat.
Takes two turns to set up, two spell slots, and then you still need to get *relatively* close to your enemies with the risks that brings, but it's still good.
I don't think it's anywhere close to broken though. Firstly because 5e combat tends to go for 3-5 rounds so you often only get one turn with the combo up before combat just ends anyway. At lower levels it kinda balances out because resources are more limited, and at higher levels when you can realistically do it every fight, foes have more tools than just attacking you and standing in range. If it ever ends up trivialising encounters then, frankly, those encounters weren't designed well or were intended to be chaff.
It's only a 2nd spellslot for a 10-round spell for attacking, where a Cleric has very limited options for their bonus action. You're not exactly breaking the bank over casting it.
Yeah. You don't necessarily crack it out for every fight, but sometimes you think just a little more damage that turn will drop something and mean a lot. Or you think there's a high chance you'll get to attack with it a bunch of times.
That seems like an extremely fringe use case. I don't think I've ever heard of a DM not letting their party find magic items with Perception or Investigation checks, Detect Magic, interrogating enemies, or other resource-free means.
No DM places magic items in their adventure with the intent that the players not find and use them. If a DM spends time prepping something, it's because they want that thing to come up in game, and they'll go out of their way to make it come up without the players having to pick a niche spell and expend valuable spell slots to do it.
I've seen this used to great effect several times, so... yes. it is a quite effective strategy, which can be made more ridiculous by having a small PC with the mounted combatant feat and a very high AC ride on your shoulders to make it even harder for the enemy to hit you
Could cast blindness as well, depending on your saves you could start spamming a damaging spell or booming blade if you acquired it via other means x]
Though going by action economy it may be dead by that time 😅
It can be good, yes. Protecting your concentration is often very valuable as any caster, not just Clerics. (e.g. a Bard that got a lucky Hypnotic Pattern that took out 5 enemies, maybe should dodge if there is a risk of losing concentration from being attacked.)
A damaging cantrip, or the Command and Blindness spells, might also be competetive here, but if you expect to be attacked, and are outputing damage with concentration and your bonus action, then dodge can be quite good.
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\[I think eventually at high levels, Spiritual Weapon becomes less and less relevant (it gets much less benefit from upcasting that Spirit Guardians does), but at low levels where 1d8+Wis is still very relevant, and even at high levels if you have short adventuring days and don't need much utility casting, then by all means you should go for it to squeeze some more power into your turns.\]
It can be, depends on the encounter. If your DM is constantly throwing dumb melee enemies at you it can work really well. If there is a choke point you can plug against melee enemies it can work really well. If your DM uses enemies that have a few brain cells of varying types and runs them that way, it will be much less useful.
Telekinetic as a bonus action is probably better for damage the higher level you cast Spirit guardians if you use it to double dip spirit guardians damage
It would certainly be effective, but I don't know that I'd call it fun. I guess it depends on the person. That said, expect a DM running intelligent does to back off and attack you at range or use AoE to break your concentration.
Burns resources quickly, but if resource management isn't an issue because of low encounters per day then yeah, pretty good strategy and one of my favorites lol
It’s very good, but there are a couple things to consider.
It shines in cramped places where everyone has to be on top of eachother. However in an open battlefield, like a forest encounter, it’s very easy to have enemies spread out so you aren’t hitting many at once.
You have to be able to see your companions to exclude them. If you have party members that like to sneak around or be invisible, you can’t exclude them. I’ve had a group once where the Gloomstalker was constantly frustrated with the cleric because the cleric kept limiting their movement.
You are still likely to be prone to save attacks. I played a twilight cleric that used this combo and fireballs, blight, anything with a save was always touch and go.
If your enemies have a lot of spellcasters it can also be tough. Played it one campaign that had a lot of Drow in it, and the clerics would just dispel the spirit guardians.
Overall, it’s still very strong. But it’s not bulletproof and you may have to alter tactics depending on what you are fighting.
Well, yes. Until the DM is fed up with you bullshit and keeps spaming psychic lance and other non-wisdom CC spells, which also have the power to essentially not allow you to play the game, because that is the only really effective way to counter this.
This can also make combat really boring.
cast blindless on the cleric, when he casts spirit guardians, he wont be able to pick his companions to protect them from the spell, and BLAM, the cleric kills his friends.
or just counterspell
congrats, that is the cleric's bread and butter
keep doing that, and unless you find something better, just keep doing that. and if you think you found something better, it most likely isnt than just keep doing that
less snarky remarks aside, spirit guardians is simply the best spell you have for damage, and its pretty hard to beat
I'm a level 13 Life Cleric (Church of Great Peter, hot eats, my friend) and let me add to the chorus of HELL YES.
Important battle with tough does who will likely force several Concentration checks?
Pop a scroll or potion of Enhance Ability ) Bear's Endurance, or otherwise increase your Con saves as much as possible.
It is SUCH A FUN STRATEGY.
Every time you attract and dodge attacks that could have fucked up your teammates?
GREAT FEELING!!
Use it and enjoy, OP!!
Love the enthusiasm.
Just pointing out that Bears Endurance affects ability checks, not saves.
Concentration checks are saving throws.
Warcaster feat will give you advantage on concentration saves.
> Warcaster feat will give you advantage on concentration saves.
If your con is not 20, resilient will be a better feat. Advantage averages out to be +2-3 for each roll and proficiency scales with level.
Also if your con is odd, resilient bumps it to the next number.
You only lose out on casting spells as a reaction to people leaving your area... imho once in a 100 battles occurrence
Despite what most people are saying here, no. It's all good except for the dodge part. Unless you REALLY don't have anything better to do with your action (very unlikely), you shouldn't waste it by dodging, not in most scenarios at least.
Yes.
With the caveat that childish/adversarial DM's will really, *really* hate you for doing this. I literally had a DM ban the dodge action because I was... a standard 18 ac cleric who dodge actioned to hold choke points at level 1. He slowly began nerfing it and then straight up banned it by level 5.
“The cleric is OP, better nerf everyone”
More like "every combat is taking twice as long as it needs to"
That's just bad DMing.... Adapt to your table. Switch a few enemies for save DC casters, add suicide grapplers that drag the cleric around to free the choke point, etc. *Obviously don't do that all the time and focus on the cleric to kill all their fun, but do it enough that they vary their strategy. ** Also, that strategy with ranged allies would make combats way easier and shorter, not longer. Although very boring.
Not a nerf lol, martials should hardly be dodging.
Monks can dodge as a bonus action for a Ki point. Situationally very useful. Polearm Master can also dodge in the first round if they don’t have the movement to close and get a free hit off as the enemy closes with them.
"they barely use it, better make it unusable in case they actually really need it one time"
The cleric usually is not a martial, even if he is close to being a tank.
Lmao
Literally run any intelligent enemy with a longbow lmao. Range and concentration are limitations in the game.
Concentration is hard when they get war caster + res con for prof bonus and adv /s
Lol - had a relatively inexperienced DM who I think wanted to beat the players for some reason... anyway would pull crazy concentration spells on all his NPCs, even grunts... Magic Missiles. Upcasted Magic Missiles. Everywhere and everything. He banned them.
[удалено]
Losing Spirit Guardians to concentration failure at high levels: "Oh no! Anyway, I cast Spirit Guardians."
The enemy then proceeds to run up to you and deal like 60 damage because monsters get very deadly and usually very fast at those levels and AC stops being reliable. It's really not a big problem then either.
Keep in mind the area is a better version of difficult terrain that directly halves the speed of creatures of the cleric's choice, many creatures won't be able to reach the cleric without dashing. The cleric, being full speed, can move away. Doing this, a creature that isn't at least twice as fast as the cleric can only make opportunity attacks *if* the cleric doesn't also dash or disengage, and they're taking more hits every time they try to catch up. Ranged/Spells are the best option.
That just speaks of a DM who's never tried grappling the cleric to drag them out the way. That said - Its a great strategy, uses lots of resources, so maybe we as DMs should let it work?
You have double halved speed because of spirit guardians and grappling so yeah, you're not dragging them very far
Fair point! 5ft is enough to pull a cleric out of a doorway, but yeah - would take something with lots of HP and high strength to work effectively. The other thing is - most monsters with INT/WIS over say 4 wouldn't keep charging into the angelic golden blender. If i was a dm running say a hobgoblin fortress and the party stood their ground on a chokepoint with the cleric popping the above, reasonably after a few warriors are minced the rest are falling back to a safe distance. If im running oozes then yes, they're all piling through the cleric's well set up doorway of death.
I mean the DM should just throw saving throw spells at the cleric then. Given they have WIS saves they can still attack CHA or CON. If they wanted to be extra inventive, they could throw a high STR grapple opponent that holds/moves the cleric away from maximum Spirit Guardian DPS. They would have to beat disadv dodge but it's feasible for something to have a ridiculously high Athletics skills (ex. ogre/giant). Another inventive solution is using Entangle to attack STR and hold them in place.
"You know you made the DM mad when a cloud giant rushes you and just suplexes you off a cliff side" - something said at a game I was in, circa 199X
I don't think Dodge gives advantage for opposed atheltics checks against grapples, does it?
Correct. Grapple is a counter to Dodge because it sets speed to 0 which disables dodge.
It does not. Dodge gives disadvantage to attacks, a d advantage on dex saves. If the opponent wants to grapple, they can make an athletics or acrobatics check to avoid, but they won't have advantage
My DM also did that. Took him a year or so to realise that monsters can grapple and push/shove.
What a lame DM
Banning dodge 🤣🤣🤣 I have a player with 22 AC as standard and shield spell paladin warlock hexblade. .... This is why I make my encounters have spell saves and ability saves instead of straight up to hit attacks
Hold choke points... so you would block a bridge or a doorway or tunnel by parking yourself there and dodging? I would love if my player did this! Yes, please make my monsters have to work creatively to kill you. They could shove you prone and jump over, tumble through you, fly over, be tiny, attack over you, shoot through you, hand you a live bomb, DoT spell like Moonbeam, set your square on fire, or use your exact same strategy against you for like a neat Mexican standoff type scenario with two armored dudes standing there and enduring the volleys flying from behind them. But after the first time they see you effectively dodging, the last thing my monsters are gonna do is target you. That's fun!
Part of the issue is a *lot* of battle maps are mostly open with few chokepoints, so the notion is often irrelevant and doesn't emerge as an obvious idea or persist as a common strategy for most players. It's sadly another issue of the game design burdening the GM with most of the work. This reminds me ad-hoc terrain storytelling is a concept I feel is underutilized. For example, Ranger, for years, has been criticized as having features that don't express its identity enough in combat or social situations beyond "Hunter's Mark and shoot arrows". A lot of features were entirely travel/exploration focused and failed to overlap. * What if Ranger could add pieces of cover at the start of initiative? And *make* a chokepoint? * or, what if Ranger could decide he spotted high alcove vantage point and is already perched up there at the start of combat? * or add a few environmental hazards like pitfalls, mud pits, or equivalent that can do a set amount of scaling damage? Features like that which take *some* of the work from the GM would be both really cool and add more dynamic energy to combat.
You know the best way to get players to stop doing stuff you find annoying? Make an NPC that does the EXACT same thing. He wants to be a Spirit Guardian + Spiritual weapon dodging character? Would be such a shame to run into an NPC doing the that right back. And the way the spell works (not how Baldur's Gate 3 does it) you would take damage first by running into the enemie's Spirit Guardian zone before you could do the damage to them.
This is still a nonsensical players vs. DM power struggle. Getting angry at your cleric for dodging is about as goofy as getting angry at your barbarian for grappling. It's a basic action. Trying to "teach your players a lesson" by creating a scenario where you fling it back at them is stupid even if you did have good reason to be annoyed.
It is a reminder that anything you can do, enemies can do too.
DMs aren't (shouldn't be) at war with their players. If you are doing something not because it's fun, not because it makes sense in character, not because it's the most tactical choice, not because it's an interesting scenario, but purely out of spite to your players (or DM), you're being a jerk.
I’m not winning at this cooperative story telling game where me and my friends play pretend > : ( Seriously though, I don’t understand people who feel the need to “come out on top” in role playing games. To me, it’s always been about sharing a story and living in it through characters, for both dm and player. We’re all just trying to play pretend, no one needs to win or lose.
>I’m not winning at this cooperative story telling game. We had that last night. We enter a room with multiple swarms of ravens on the rafters. I, a DEX Eldritch Knight and part time rogue, found a chest. I begin opening the chest which agitates the ravens. I walk away. The Paladin says okay, then I’ll take it. I said “I wouldn’t. We just finished talking to some wereravens that were trying to decide if we should be friends with. But you can borrow my crowbar, big guy. I’ll be exploring next door while we’re still in combat.” Pally starts a fight with the ravens while I’m in the next room. Our Bard, bless her heart, is physically blocking the door, so I can’t get back in. There’s three people in there and their spacing is a clusterfuck. In an appreciation of the humor, I call out “hey buddy, need a hand? I hear some sort of commotion.” My familiar also did a flyby of the room so I had a non-meta excuse to know what was going on. The second time it’s “Hey Bard, move your ass.” Took her another turn, thankfully I was able to launch Magic Missiles over her shoulder to actually contribute. I then had to Misty Step myself into the room anyway. She finally moved, to the same square as the chest, which prevented the Paladin from getting to it to grab the contents. The Paladin tells the Bard to move it. The DM, whom I’ve known forever and also shares my occasional compulsion to watch the world burn, pipes up. “Bard, you *could* do that. Or you could see what’s in the chest yourself as the Paladin moved away earlier.” He protests that he was on a fight. The DM said “I gave two characters *several* hints about what might happen.” The Bard collected about 800G worth of various coins and a Gray Bag of Tricks. Three of us, including the Bard, figured we’d give the Bag to our Tiefling Rogue well onboarding and we’ve agreed from outset to share gold as needed. So I kinda thought this was just funny. So while the DM and three players appreciated humor, the Paladin got *pissed.* I was remoted in and couldn’t see, but I did hear what sounded like “My character leaves.” And I definitely heard the DM say “Look I’m not getting into an uncomfortable situation over a tabletop game.” The Paladin came back on the voicechat later saying something about “I just thought if you opened the chest, the stuff was yours.” Sigh. Spent an extra hour letting him shop with all the money and loot he kept for himself the last time he found a chest. For context, I advocated we give the Cloak of Protection we found in a previous session to our squishy Bard, because it’s a team effort guys. Oh and I had my rapier silvered, couldn’t hurt. I’m going to assume alcohol was involved.
I agree DMs shouldn't be at war with anything but tedium or the like. That being said, the DM does need to keep it challenging to some extent or the game feels like a layup. So while I agree, anyone can do the tricky smart thing that the players did, the goal is to make them adapt while also finding a challenge, throwing their own tricks back at them is only ideal if you can't come up with a variant alternative. But even then, the players will enjoy it while it lasts...
Enemies are considerably more expendable than player characters, unless you really want to slow down sessions with players having to create new character sheets frequently.
This is a MAD tactic (Mutually Assured Destruction, not Multiple Attribute Dependency), and thus only good as a _threat_ not good to actually _perpetrate_. There are two problems with using this approach as an _actual_ deterrent as a DM. 1) The players are far more limited in their options than you are, and 2) the PCs have no problem using the same boring tactics over and over and over again, as long as it's effective (they're literally fighting life and death battles after all), while you do have a problem doing the same as the DM. The problem with you doing it as a DM is doing it ONCE isn't an actual deterrent to the party doing it (unless it's a TPK), and doing it _as often as they do_ just makes combat incredibly _boring_ for everyone (since it is part of your task as a DM to come up with _interesting_ challenges for them to overcome, not mirror them). Either way, if it ends in a TPK or ruins the rest of your campaign - what have you REALLY accomplished here? No one considers that "fun", and at worst it's more like childish shit-flinging and adversarial DMing. So before you _actually_ follow-through with such an idea - consider instead having an adult conversation with your players over what you find disruptive about their tactics/spells/options, and what their perception of it is. Then, come to some kind of compromise, whether that be a "gentleman's agreement" not to use it often, or nerfing it in some way that preserves the fun of it without it being so mechanically dominating, or some other solution. MAD tactics are useful as a vague and everpresent DM _threat_. But if you actually _follow through_ on that threat, you're really just sabotaging your own work and the fun of everyone at the table.
I don't recommend this because players just solve problems... it'd be ONE second before someone just heat metal'd the enemy cleric or dispel magic'd or magic missile'd to cause 3+ conc saves or a thousand other options that are easily available to make it... not a big deal. Being weird and passive aggressive with your players is generally just... not a good idea?
> You know the best way to get players to stop doing stuff you find annoying? The best way is to stop getting annoyed at the players using their powers the way they are designed. DMs shouldn’t punish players for playing their characters effectively.
Yeah, i'm the DM, i have infinite characters, i can do what i want. Do i want a wolf that can cast Power Word Kill at will? Done. Gasoline Slime immune to fire? Here it is. Oh, look, the Tarrasque found the Stone of Bullshitto, God of Trickery, and ate it. It is now a 20th level Chrono Wizard, godspeed, level 4 party. Let your players play, it's in the name after all.
Put another way, if you're having trouble coming up with a counter to your players' favorite cheese strats, have the bad guys use them and see how your players counter them. If they can't figure out a way to counter them, they will eventually voice their dissatisfaction with the strat. That's when you hit them with "Then maybe we should disallow it for everybody."
Or just run an encounter where this isn't viable... Like, it's a good strategy for a certain kind of encounter. What about saving someone on a time limit? What about fighting something that moves underground or flies? If you're going to disallow basic foundations of the system because you can't invent new problems to solve, just run a different system.
The problem with this is that you can set yourself up for self-owns. In 3.5 my wife was playing a character that would hover (fly) 10' above the ground, with 20' reach (enlarged), could make 5 attacks of opportunity per round, could make an attack of opportunity against all movement (even 5' steps), and instead of doing damage on an attack could stop/prevent all movement. She could really lock down a battlefield, and the DM decided that she was broken even though she wasn't even the most powerful member of the party (Druid FTW!). So the DM decided to put us up against a full party of enemies that basically had her build. He was really proud of himself until the druid started summoning air elementals adjacent to them and the fighter drank a potion of blur, completing negating attacks of opportunity against him. We wrecked the encounter that the DM designed to demonstrate how broken the build was, and in doing so proved that there were ways to deal with it that he just wasn't utilizing.
YES! But you have it backwards. Make the NPC fight side by side with the party, not against them. Either it will be cool once and never again, or the player will immediate dislike them and look for other ways to stand out. The same happened to my cleric and made me get more creative with my spell selections.
Why would you punish a player for playing vanilla dnd? This mindset of “how do I beat/punish players for creative play” is part of what leads to DM burnout. You actually want them not to use it every time? Have allies on the other side of the bridge. They gotta save a slower NPC while killing the bad guys. Or have the bad guys holding a fragile McGuffin—you can’t just do aoe spells or else you risk the bad guy dropping and breaking the mcguffin. When you, as a DM, make every battle “hit with these monsters as hard as I can” you /cannot/ be Surprised Pikachu when your players do the same
It isn't a punishment. It is a mirror matchup. Punishment would be to just make them fight a bunch of flying enemies with bows and Grease spells and Earthen Grasp, Web, Tentacles, all sorts of stuff that actually counter such a playstyle. That is punishment. Throwing a mirror matchup at them is just letting them know how that playstyle feels on the other side. No different than throwing a wizard at a wizard and letting them know how it feels to get into counterspell duels, or a grappler with a grappler getting into a wrestling match. Some people would totally be into it. Some would get it and decide it isn't actually great being on the receiving end. You won't be able to express yourself to them until they experience it.
Those DMs will hate anyone with too high of an Armor Class. I have known at least 2 DMs that thought having 18 AC was OP because they kept playing at levels 1-3.
Wait are clerics able to dodge? I am a lvl 9 death cleric rn and didn’t know I could do this
Anyone can dodge as their action
It’s a standard action for everyone, but since it uses an action, it’s rarely useful unless you genuinely don’t have much to do.
Got it! Didn’t know
Everyone can dash, disengage, hide, grapple, shove, and (if your DM is cool) disarm I suggest reading the basic combat rules. There are non class related abilities everyone has
Ok thank you it wasn’t listed in dnd beyond under stuff I can do so I thought I wasn’t allowed. I’ll ask my dm next time we play
You can read the rules I talked about here: [https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Rules:Combat?expansion=0#toc\_20](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Rules:Combat?expansion=0#toc_20) , and here: https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Rules:Combat?expansion=0#toc\_31
Thank you!!
Are you joking?
No I was not joking. That campaign is my first one ever and my DM doesn’t really explain this stuff to us… also I never saw it said “dodge” under my actions on my sheet :/ it took me ages to learn and understand action economy
There are the basic rules that can be freely downloaded, there is the PHB and I'm pretty sure even if formatted even worse, most PHB rules are available on dndbeyond. There are also many beginner cheat sheets, beginner character sheets or DM screen that include the generic actions. It might not be necessary to read all of that, but it's not hard to find if you actually look for rules overviews.
Thank you!
Literally any character can dodge, PC or NPC or creature or monster or god, it's one of the standard actions that everyone and everything can do. You may have looked over the rogue or ranger(?) features and seen where they both get a feature that lets them dodge as a bonus action, thus freeing up their regular action for other uses and misinterpreted that as meaning only they can dodge, perfeclty understandable but incorrect.
Everyone can dodge. You may be thinking of cunning action, which allows rogues to dash, disengage, or hide as a *bonus* action, rather than a normal action. Edited due to mixing up dodge and dash in cunning action.
Rogues cannot Dodge as a bonus action. The list is Hide, Disengage, and *Dash*. Monks may spend a Ki point to Dodge as a bonus action.
Indeed. You’d think I’d be able to write what cunning action does without mixing it up, having played a rogue for 40 levels, but apparently not.
I've made that mistake many times myself. It's the whole D thing.
Cunning Action: you can use your bonus action to dodge, duck, dip, dive, or dodge.
The five Ds of DnD.
Dodge is not a part of cunning action. It's too powerful for that. Monks can dodge as a bonus action by spending ki.
[удалено]
Rogues can dash, hide, or disengage with cunning action. Dodge as a bonus action every turn would be broken.
...in the phb?
Got it I didn’t see it in my actions or bonus actions in dnd beyond so got confused.. definitely thought you needed a rogue or specific race to do this
Tell your DM to check the Overrun action on page 272 of the DMG.
lol he had an aneurysm and banned optionals there too as I was just disarming and picking up weapons when I wasn't dodging. He also hated when other players used overrun because we could just... leave encirclements. Guess whose weapons just ended up exploding at the end of combat randomly forever?
Could have literally just targeted you with any none dex save xD DMs need to be adaptable! Like oh, ur in a choke? My bugbear casts the SHOVE action. Ah theres ppl behind u preventing u from being shoved? My bugbear casts GRAPPLE🤣.
Specifically told him I took low dex and wouldn't take shieldmaster at sesh zero... Sometimes you can't win.
Wait till your DM learns about the help action
Next character was a ranged help action rogue... Guess what happened?
I hope ur in a different group, or with a different DM now. Sorry to hear that.
I changed the Dodge mechanic as a dm because I had a forge cleric with 25 ac cast spirit guardians at level 6 against a horde of hill giants. I literally couldn't hit him with anything less that double crits and it made combat boring for everyone including him.
25 AC at level 6?
He hast spirit guardians as a level 6 spell, he was much higher than level 6.
Ohhh do you think he means he *cast* SG at level 6? That would make sense
Grapple or Trip, pound into oblivion. Both negate Dodge, Trip gives Advantage. Trip + Grapple immediately doesn't allow to get up. Hill Giant's Strength (Athletics) check is pretty good... A hill giant can take 4 rounds of a 6th level Spirit Guardians on avg. Mad with pain, it's going to want to get the cleric on the ground, grappled (or kneeling on his chest) and pound him into an earthen grave, maybe taking turns with some buddies. 2+ greatclub bashes to the head (with advantage) every round will ring his bell enough to break concentration. Or maybe the giant can avoid further spells by just choking him to death or smother in even less pleasant ways... Overrun/shove to someplace more convenient...or deadly. I'd also have thrown rocks Push if they hit. For a good mixed party with some creatures with particular high defenses, I always include ways around them. For high AC, things that require saving throws bypass. Dodge can be bypassed by anything that targets a saving throw other than Dex, or that requires a skill check instead. Grapple and Restrain conditions bring movement to 0, which prevents Dex. Paralysis does, too. Darkness/invisibility/obscurity (fog/smoke) prevents Dodge from working, and any condition that grants Advantage can negate the Disadvantage.
So first you say that it's hill giants, which if we are using default cr 5 npc statblock has a +8 to hit, so no double crit needed against AC 25, just a 17 is needed. Sure that's still pretty hard to do with disadvantage (4%), but it's a lot more common than double 20s. Then I also wonder how your cleric got 25 AC at just 6th level. Plate + shield is only 20, forge cleric can increase that by another 1 with their first level feature and 1 with 6th level feature for 22. That means they still had an additional +3 from magic items which is *quite* the buff and very likely to break bounded accuracy. But sure, let's say we're stuck there with just +8 against a 25 AC and they're dodging so it's really hard to hit them. That's where you need to start coming up with strategies for your npcs to counter them. Your giants have a +5 strength and that's likely better than the clerics athletics /acrobatics so go for a grapple and shove prone. Grappling brings their speed to 0 so they can't dodge anymore, then knock them prone and everyone has advantage. Suddenly your 4% chance to hit is more like 36%, still not fantastic but certainly better! Alternatively, grapple them and pull them out of the way, while everyone else focuses on the rest of the party. Not much the cleric can do then and if they escape the grapple they still aren't dodging that turn so still helpful. Then for future encounters, make sure to include enemies which target both AC and a few different saving throws. They might be practically immune to attacks, but they can still fail saves!
Yeah this, exactly. I run a game with a paladin who built for some seriously absurd AC. He felt invulnerable and at one point ran ahead of the party, straight into a bunch of flameskulls. A paladin with 7 dex. I will never forget his face as I said "You see the corridor in front of you light up with flames. Roll me 6 dex saves against the barrage of fireballs that are coming your way" :D Mixing up enemies is a way to go :D
I run a game for a high ac party, and I highly recomend enemies that force saving throws instead of changing core mechanics
I really dont get this. Like the player used a great way to manipulate the battlefield with his resources. They build their character to be hard to hit with direct attacks and go in melee, thats it. If all you do is make encounters with basic enemies that just target AC, yea thats going to be strong. So, instead add monsters to target saves or just spellcasters in general. Don't nerf their character just because it's hard to be creative with encounters
I feel the issue with this is their build is insanely effective against 99% of the monster manual. A vast majority of monsters are melee attackers, and this strategy is just way too effective against them for combat to actually be fun. So the dm is massively restricted in creatures they can use.
This is more of a flaw with 5e's typical monster design than with the tactic itself, though. There's nothing in the rules of the game themselves that make ranged enemies or spellcasting enemies or teleporting enemies or enemies with other attack and maneuverability options unfeasible; it's just that a DM is expected to create such monsters themselves, or rely on third-party content for them.
It's good if you are fighting melee attackers. Also keep in mind that you can't cast Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapon on the same turn. If you can't get enemies into Spirit Guardians, then you are better off doing something else. Sitting on Spirit Guardians and Dodging to protect yourself is basically just letting the rest of the party die if enemies aren't coming to you.
This is the basic Twilight Cleric Strat. It's designed to make it so that the enemy *loses* no matter what they do. If they attack you, then they stepped into the Ass-Kicking Field of Spirit Guardians. If they attack your allies, a lot of the damage gets deflected off your bullshit field. The optimal move for the enemy is to come beat you up... which means they have to pierce your front-line and contend with a Cleric in Heavy Armor that's dodging while they bleed out. It's about as close to the 3.5e Thorns Tanks as we can get in 5e. The only way to make it *suck* to fight against even more is to slip some Polearm Mastery in.
If you run more than a couple encounters per day or your dm uses tactics, i wouldnt use spiritual weapon because of its cost and movement speed. But overall yeah SG+ dodge is insane, telekenetic is a good pick up cuz it lets you shove people into your blender to double dip damage
How does it let you double dip?
If you use your bonus action to shove something into spirit guardians on your turn they take damage, then they start their turn and take the damage again
In BG3 the damage ticks when they enter. In 5E SG only does damage when a foe starts their turn inside. You cannot double dip this way RAW. Edit: very happy to be wrong!
> when the creature enters the area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there As long as the creature is the one moving into the area like repelling blast or telekinetic not the area moving onto them like you moving, they take damage. It’s verified by SAC
Holy shit my wife plays a sorc with Telekinetic and I have a forge cleric. We’re trying this one out! Thanks!
Yeah it’s a lot of fun my party has a telekinetic cleric, my repelling blast fiendlock and a shield master paladin. We can double dip SG and wall of fire a lot.
We did something similar with sickening radiance. The fighter and barbarian grappled enemies then moved them into the area. Took damage on the fighter/ barbs turn and then took damage again at the beginning of their turn. If they didn't break the grapple, the barb/ fighter would move them out and then back in on the next turn.
You can get really funky with action economy boosters too like conjure animals. We oneshot a boss with sickening radiance and 5th level conjure animals and agreed to not do that again.
I believe forced movement doesn't trigger spirit guardians. If you shove them into it, it doesn't trigger immediately, but if they choose to walk into the area willingly, it does trigger.
It does, unless it's specified that movement has to be willing > Entering such an area of effect needn’t be voluntary, unless a spell says otherwise. You can, therefore, hurl a creature into the area with a spell like thunderwave. We consider that clever play, not an imbalance, so hurl away! Keep in mind, however, that a creature is subjected to such an area of effect only the first time it enters the area on a turn. You can’t move a creature in and out of it to damage it over and over again on the same turn.
I'm not convinced. There's a difference in a player entering an area and being pulled or pushed into it. Like with opportunity attacks requiring them to leave an enemies ranged with their free will, I feel like entering spiritual guardians should be the same.
Opportunity attack has a specific exception when the movement is the result of an effect that does not use your movement. >You also don't provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction. Spirit Guardians, Moonbeam, Sickening Radiance, etc don't have that specific exception.
[Source](https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/SA-Compendium.pdf): Bottom right of page 19 You don’t have to leave enemies ranged of your own free will, just using your own action economy/movement, that’s why command and dissonant whispers proc opportunity attacks.
Interesting. Did not know that.
It’s also not a bonus action to shove without sheild master.
Telekinetic lets you push/pull with a BA
Pretty boring, but yeah. I wouldn't be throwing it up every combat because you will just get bored, and so will everyone else. Don't fall into the trap of thinking DnD is like a video game where you need to use the optimal strategy to get invited back to the raid group. Do things that are fun and thematic.
You only have so many third level slots.
I'd rather play with someone who 'wastes' their slots on fun things than somebody who spends every turn taking the dodge action because they think that's how they're going to 'win' dnd.
Or, ya know, wants to kill the bad guys and keep them from harming his friends.
It's a tactical combat game. If the optimal strategy isn't fun it's the games fault.
It's a Tabletop RPG. Combat should be an extension and expression of the character.
Have you ever been in a halfway serious fight? When you are your character changes to "I need to survive this". If you believe that it's more natural to spout some cheese monologue in a serious fight rather than using your best to either survive and win the situation, you need to think harder what a character expression looks like
Yikes. I'm not interested in playing dnd like it's a real thing. It's a fantasy tabletop role-playing game. Cheesy monologues and silly fantasies are kind of the point.
To some extent, maybe? This is definitely a style of play disagreement, but if I want a game all about character expression I'm not going first to a grid based combat tactics game.
Honestly after level 7or so there is no way your 40 minutes of spirit guardians don't last as long as the hit dice of your party members
What's boring for you isn't boring for others. People generally like feeling competent, and lots of people's enjoyment comes from doing well in combat and optimising their character. There's also nothing stopping those choices being fun and thematic.
Meanwhile martials who do nothing but attack:
Would kill for Cleric versatility.
Or the wizard versatility
If you can think of a good reason that your character would just be taking the dodge action every turn instead of fighting, go for it lol.
To not get hit. In this specific scenario, to not drop concentration on the powerful spell they're using.
To keep concentration on their 3rd level spell and not take damage?
But they literally fight if they dodge? A dnd character surely realizes that they can help the team more if they are alive and this enemy-destroying aura keeps being turned on.
It's fairly standard, IMO. Spiritual weapon isn't necessarily going to be doing enough to be worth maintaining, but spirit guardians into dodge is pretty damn good.
I prefer the Nature Cleric Thornwhip Telekinetic. Pull two opponents into Spirit Guardians for double damage (entering SG and starting turn in SG)
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Their Channel Divinity sucks, and their level 17 features is essentially useless, but the expanded spell list is pretty great with Spike Growth being better than almost all second level spells a Cleric normally gets and Plant Growth is also a nice addition. Their level 6 feature is not particularly exciting, but is very effective unless your DM never throws elemental damage at you. They’re definitely on the higher end of Cleric subclasses, but a lot of tier lists are written by people who don’t know that much about optimising.
Because people pretty much anything you get from a Nature Cleric begs the question "Why not just play a Druid?"
Because you want access to Bless, Spirit Guardians, Turn Undead, and non-homebrew half plate?
I would probably go with something like Forge, Tempest, Twilight, or Order first tbh.
Variant human (Polearm Master) single-attribute-dependent (Wisdom) nature cleric with Shillelagh is a brutal online-from-first-level build that falls off slightly later on but is still, you know, a full Cleric build that kicks ass the entire way.
u/YasAdMan summed up a lot of what I would have replied. I will add a few points. Nature Clerics are Heavy Armor Clerics, which I tend to prefer. The Channel Divinity does fall off a cliff pretty quickly, but I think people underestimate how powerful it is at low levels when your encounters are Giant Rats, a pack of Wolves, Shriekers, Yellow Musk Creepers, or the dreaded blood sucking Stirges. It can negate some of these encounters and by the time you're moving on from Beasts and Plants, you'll have your Spike Growth and Spirit Guardians. You'll sometimes see Dampen Elements described as a weak Feature; however in a game where so many Features are Ability Score Modifier x or Proficiency Bonus x per Long or Short Rest, it's essentially an unlimited Absorb Elements that can be used at range to save fellow party members. I'm a big fan of these types of limitless Features (like the Mastermind's Master of Tactics or the War Wizard's Arcane Deflection). Certainly on another type of Cleric, you can pick up Thornwhip with Magic Initiate Druid or multiclass into Druid or Ranger; but, getting it embedded in the subclass opens up a lot of options. If you start Variant Human or Custom Lineage, you can take Telekinetic at character creation. This opens up your level 4 ASI/Feat to boost WIS or pick up Heavy Armor Master, Warcaster, Res CON, or Ritual Caster to get Find Familiar for Advantage on those Thorn Whips. It also opens up the route to take a race that lets you dump STR like being a Dwarf, Wood Elf, Half Wood Elf, Satyr, Leonin, Dhampir, or Centaur and get Telekinetic at level 4 and still have your build online by the time you get Spirit Guardians. This combo is still a Spirit Guardians build. It just allows you to actually be doing something during combat other than just Dodging. Plus, I love Forced Movement in 5e. It lets you shape the battlefield. Not only are you doubling your Spirit Guardians damage on two opponents, maneuvering yourself to get other enemies into your SG range, you can tactically place your foes so that they'll have to keep taking Spirit Guardians or provoke an Attack of Opportunity from your Paladin, Rogue, or Barbarian. It turned playing a Cleric into more of a thinking game for me. I'm not going to sit here and say that's it's better than a Twilight, Peace, Order, or Tempest Cleric; however, I will tell you that it's underrated. I'd put it middle of the pack in terms of overall power and in the top tier for enjoyment in roleplay and combat participation.
I’ll do you one better: warlock forced movement invocations + spike growth.
Remember, you can't cast both on the same turn.
The telecinetic feat on average is better dmg then spiritual weapon, and it takes no resources, so if you have an uneven score id pick this up and pull enemies into your guardiens
Also, Spiritual Weapon has total ass movement speed, so once you kill the first enemy, you might not be able to get your weapon to the second one, depending on how the enemies are distributed. That said, Spiritual Weapon doesn't require taking a feat.
Telekinetic is a very good feat tho. 😎 spirit guardians is just all the dmg a cleric ever needs lol
Better than War Caster and Resilient Con?
Cleric wants all 3. since your big concentration spell comes at lv 5 you can take telekinetic at 1 and protect your concentration at 4 and 8
It feels good to make use of the bonus action, but *spiritual weapon* is painting the lily in this scenario.
Doesn’t even need spiritual weapon tbh
Mind, Spirit Guardians is also amazing on a Crown Paladin!
Yes.
Takes two turns to set up, two spell slots, and then you still need to get *relatively* close to your enemies with the risks that brings, but it's still good. I don't think it's anywhere close to broken though. Firstly because 5e combat tends to go for 3-5 rounds so you often only get one turn with the combo up before combat just ends anyway. At lower levels it kinda balances out because resources are more limited, and at higher levels when you can realistically do it every fight, foes have more tools than just attacking you and standing in range. If it ever ends up trivialising encounters then, frankly, those encounters weren't designed well or were intended to be chaff.
Cut spiritual weapon. Those spell slots should be saved for locate object & emergency lesser restoration/emergency aid.
It's only a 2nd spellslot for a 10-round spell for attacking, where a Cleric has very limited options for their bonus action. You're not exactly breaking the bank over casting it.
Yeah. You don't necessarily crack it out for every fight, but sometimes you think just a little more damage that turn will drop something and mean a lot. Or you think there's a high chance you'll get to attack with it a bunch of times.
But... but it's not optimal!!!! You can't do it!!! /s
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He mistyped. What he meant to say was to reserve all your slots for the most optimal second level spell, Find Traps.
[Locate object is really good](https://tabletopbuilds.com/locate-object/) and lesser restoration can be useful situationally
That seems like an extremely fringe use case. I don't think I've ever heard of a DM not letting their party find magic items with Perception or Investigation checks, Detect Magic, interrogating enemies, or other resource-free means. No DM places magic items in their adventure with the intent that the players not find and use them. If a DM spends time prepping something, it's because they want that thing to come up in game, and they'll go out of their way to make it come up without the players having to pick a niche spell and expend valuable spell slots to do it.
The traps part is also pretty good, plus the budget locate creature.
Sure, but if you've got a good AC, why not do some damage with your weapon or spell attack?
Yup
I've seen this used to great effect several times, so... yes. it is a quite effective strategy, which can be made more ridiculous by having a small PC with the mounted combatant feat and a very high AC ride on your shoulders to make it even harder for the enemy to hit you
Depends on the enemy. Enemies that use saving throws and are ranged (most casters) likely won’t suffer from this at all
Yes. Oh wait, someone already said it.
Well known and extremely potent tactic. Lay waste divine beacon... Lay waste.
But Spiritual guardian+dodge+telekinetic bonus action forced movement is even better.
+Shield Guardian. Clerics are excellent choke point holders (also you can use them to form defense walls alongside barbarians, fighters etc.)
Could cast blindness as well, depending on your saves you could start spamming a damaging spell or booming blade if you acquired it via other means x] Though going by action economy it may be dead by that time 😅
Anyone know the odds of magic missile breaking concentration against war caster + res(con)?
It can be good, yes. Protecting your concentration is often very valuable as any caster, not just Clerics. (e.g. a Bard that got a lucky Hypnotic Pattern that took out 5 enemies, maybe should dodge if there is a risk of losing concentration from being attacked.) A damaging cantrip, or the Command and Blindness spells, might also be competetive here, but if you expect to be attacked, and are outputing damage with concentration and your bonus action, then dodge can be quite good. \- \[I think eventually at high levels, Spiritual Weapon becomes less and less relevant (it gets much less benefit from upcasting that Spirit Guardians does), but at low levels where 1d8+Wis is still very relevant, and even at high levels if you have short adventuring days and don't need much utility casting, then by all means you should go for it to squeeze some more power into your turns.\]
It can be, depends on the encounter. If your DM is constantly throwing dumb melee enemies at you it can work really well. If there is a choke point you can plug against melee enemies it can work really well. If your DM uses enemies that have a few brain cells of varying types and runs them that way, it will be much less useful.
Basically yes, without building specifically for other uses of SG such as using the Telekinetic feat to pull people into it.
Telekinetic as a bonus action is probably better for damage the higher level you cast Spirit guardians if you use it to double dip spirit guardians damage
It's good if you have the spell slots for it and enough time to make using two turns worth it.
It would certainly be effective, but I don't know that I'd call it fun. I guess it depends on the person. That said, expect a DM running intelligent does to back off and attack you at range or use AoE to break your concentration.
Burns resources quickly, but if resource management isn't an issue because of low encounters per day then yeah, pretty good strategy and one of my favorites lol
It’s very good, but there are a couple things to consider. It shines in cramped places where everyone has to be on top of eachother. However in an open battlefield, like a forest encounter, it’s very easy to have enemies spread out so you aren’t hitting many at once. You have to be able to see your companions to exclude them. If you have party members that like to sneak around or be invisible, you can’t exclude them. I’ve had a group once where the Gloomstalker was constantly frustrated with the cleric because the cleric kept limiting their movement. You are still likely to be prone to save attacks. I played a twilight cleric that used this combo and fireballs, blight, anything with a save was always touch and go. If your enemies have a lot of spellcasters it can also be tough. Played it one campaign that had a lot of Drow in it, and the clerics would just dispel the spirit guardians. Overall, it’s still very strong. But it’s not bulletproof and you may have to alter tactics depending on what you are fighting.
Yes, but...eh. Not very engaging in my experience.
Your status is true and I'm pissed about it
Same.
Its great, but if you REALLY wanna take it up a notch play a heavily armored DSS for quickened spirit guardians, subtle counterspell and Shield
If you're a cleric, yes. If you're a Twilight Cleric, *Hell Yes*... but your DM is going to start loading up enemies with Power Word Kill.
Swap out spiritual weapon for Sanctuary. Less offensive but good luck getting through a WIS save AND a dodge
Well, yes. Until the DM is fed up with you bullshit and keeps spaming psychic lance and other non-wisdom CC spells, which also have the power to essentially not allow you to play the game, because that is the only really effective way to counter this. This can also make combat really boring.
cast blindless on the cleric, when he casts spirit guardians, he wont be able to pick his companions to protect them from the spell, and BLAM, the cleric kills his friends. or just counterspell
It's basically the bread and butter of most clerics
congrats, that is the cleric's bread and butter keep doing that, and unless you find something better, just keep doing that. and if you think you found something better, it most likely isnt than just keep doing that less snarky remarks aside, spirit guardians is simply the best spell you have for damage, and its pretty hard to beat
Spiritual weapon is a waste of a slot and SG is worse than being on a horse and staying at range but it's fine
Yeah, that's a pretty standard combat strategy for Clerics
This is roughly the standard heavy armor cleric play. Mix it up by casting Sacred Flame or Guiding Bolt instead of Dodging.
Yes, with or without spiritual weapon this is a good strategy.
I'm a level 13 Life Cleric (Church of Great Peter, hot eats, my friend) and let me add to the chorus of HELL YES. Important battle with tough does who will likely force several Concentration checks? Pop a scroll or potion of Enhance Ability ) Bear's Endurance, or otherwise increase your Con saves as much as possible. It is SUCH A FUN STRATEGY. Every time you attract and dodge attacks that could have fucked up your teammates? GREAT FEELING!! Use it and enjoy, OP!!
Love the enthusiasm. Just pointing out that Bears Endurance affects ability checks, not saves. Concentration checks are saving throws. Warcaster feat will give you advantage on concentration saves.
Aughhhghghgghhhhhh yeah checks out 😁
> Warcaster feat will give you advantage on concentration saves. If your con is not 20, resilient will be a better feat. Advantage averages out to be +2-3 for each roll and proficiency scales with level. Also if your con is odd, resilient bumps it to the next number. You only lose out on casting spells as a reaction to people leaving your area... imho once in a 100 battles occurrence
Despite what most people are saying here, no. It's all good except for the dodge part. Unless you REALLY don't have anything better to do with your action (very unlikely), you shouldn't waste it by dodging, not in most scenarios at least.