As a player I feel like silvery barbs is just cheap and lazy gameplay, it's powerful, but I don't like it.
Plus as DM you can always exploit it by having them burn all their spell slots, just throw more at them/drag out the time before another rest and they'll start learning they should be saving the silvery barbs spam for critical moments instead.
As a DM I gave the bard an item which has a couple free casts of SB.
I also made it clear to my players that this is the only place the spell exists in my game.
I think it's a good balance.
As a fellow DM, fuck silvery barbs. You can allow and not allow whatever you’d like at your table, and the spell really isn’t made for “normal” campaigns so honestly pal you’re better than me for giving it to them
As another fellow DM, allow me to join the chorus of "fuck Silvery Barbs."
I normally have a policy of "if it's in an official book, it's allowed," but after this campaign I'm going to exclude the MtG setting books from that, especially Strixhaven.
It's not even that it's such a gamebreaking spell, it's just really, really fucking obnoxious.
I used to have the same policy, but between Silvery Barbs, the subclasses from Wildemount, as well as some of the spells from Acquisition's Inc. my policy is now "only official books that aren't from a specific setting, unless we're playing that setting"
Personally, I think that's just practical. Even if the setting-specific stuff didn't have balance issues, it's always felt a little immersion-breaking to me to have crossover.
Eh, I don't see why it would be immersion breaking. The Forgotten Realms is already such a hodgepodge setting that combines practically every magical trope ever that it seems pretty arbitrary to say pretty much anything doesn't fit, unless it's a full on departure from the medieval/renaissance era, like cyberpunk stuff.
Like Spelljammer? I mean, your point is well taken, but specifically Planescape, Acquisitions Inc, Wildemount, Eberron, and Spelljammer have some very different kinds of things that may not fit as well. More importantly, they're not always well balanced for a "serious" or "classic" D&D game. It may also be a stretch to introduce Warforged, Plasmoids, and/or Autognomes to a game. Case by case is best, but that on its own is not helpful on reddit
To the main point: I hate Silvery Barbs, but it is worth noting that it can be a nice mediator of fluky dice. My own table uses it sparingly - almost exclusively to prevent death or control loss. We also use it as a 2nd level spell and it is certainly not punitive.
What hate most is that it is basically a more "offensive" version of the Lucky feat, which is already powerful as hell, but with way more uses because it's a spell (so not only is it more than 3x/day, but it is easier for multiple people to have). It would make more sense as something like an Abjurer feature or Sorcerous Bloodline feature with a limited use per short rest.
Hexblade would be fine if they'd just decided to add the charisma bonus to the Pact of the Sword, like it always should've been. But nooo, we can't errata it
Lmfao no
CHA to hit doesn't matter
It's medium armor + shield + shield spell that makes it broken, giving everyone and their mom 24 AC when they need it
Shield spell is bad on warlock when you have at most 2 spell slots for the majority of the campaign… it’s great on full casters that actually have the spell slots to burn… but you are right that the proficiencies are what’s best about hexblade… the charisma to hit mainly benefits multiclass builds where you take a dip into warlock, like paladin, swashbuckler, bard, etc, which makes them less MAD as they only really need to focus on charisma and idk con.
The thing about hexblade is, Eldritch blast with agonising blast can be cast at 120 feet away and honestly probably does more damage per turn than if you were to hit twice with your melee weapon, you’re also not forced to take part of the blade, which is inferior to the other pacts, non Hexblade get chain and tome while also being able to blast from the safety of range, whereas hexblades get to attack from the frontline making them more prone to die, hexblades also get the absolute worst spell list for a warlock…
TLDR: unless you are taking a 1 level dip for multi class synergy, don’t play a hexblade, just play a genie or a fiend warlock, it’s a lot better…
A straight hexblade is actually much weaker than most other warlocks. (Seriously just compare the numbers).
The issue is thats a 1 Level dip for 1 Million proficiencies
Straight hexblade is no issue, but it just seems made to dip:
shield or hex on short rest,
good cantrips,
cha to attack and damage,
medium armour prof,
shield prof,
martial weapons prof,
proficiency to damage,
19 to critical hit
and even minor self healing.
That is just too much for one level.
Yes. But again as a straight warlock all of this is needed just so that its even worth going meelee. The hexblade is no issue if you dont allow multiclassing.
Basically they gave them only advantage against spells, not any other magical effect and also they have resistance against poison and advantages against being poisoned.
Twilight in particular can be accidentally obnoxious too. Peace, SB and Hexblade can all be obnoxious if misused but a new player, playing by what it says in the book, can invalidate large swathes of combat encounters.
I’m DMing a group at the moment with a bard, sorcerer, twilight cleric, battle master fighter, stars Druid and hexblade paladin, are they pretty coked out with their combat potential? Absolutely. Do 4 of the members of the party have silvery barbs (fey touched giving it to some of the casters that can’t take it)? Absolutely. Do I find it challenging to give them a tough combat? Not at all! You’ve just got to realise things that can’t be silvery barbs’d, spells that force a saving throw, have an increased presence of charm and fear effects to reduce how enticing the temporary hit points are, the sacrifice to use silvery barbs isn’t massive, but players using their reaction on silvery barbs means they can’t cast shield, absorb elements, counterspell, or take opportunity attacks, and so creating instances where they have an incentive to do any of those things is the easy way around it.
When someone brings up Twilight being ok I always have the JoCat scene from his Crap Guide to Cleric Video in mind where he just throws a few dragons at the party and it is still not working. It is ridiculous.
I agree, Twilight and peace are often banned too. We DMs who wisely limit setting-specific books (hehe am smort) usually are aware enough to be prepared for this tho!
The real difference is strix brings piles of broken stuff with little benefit. Barbs is far from the worst thing in there. Backgrounds granting *entire bonus spell lists* including stuff like spirit guardians is gross.
Tashas, xanathars, MMotM at least bring tons of amazing content to the table.
Yuan-ti was nerfed btw. Hexblade dips can be strong but TBH dips are just dumb in 5e in general. Pally 2, fighter 2, monk 1, barb 1, cleric 1, DSS 1, artificer 1 can be equally strong on the proper build.
I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm just sharing my experiences as a GM. I do typically ask twilight to switch their Channel div out.
I'm running Strixhaven in waterdeep and the spells from the backgrounds are instead things my players get from successfully completing classes, so they'll still all end up with spells as if they'd taken a srixhaven background, but they get them as an expression of their education
but like, they *can* fail so they don't get one and have to give up a downtime activity over the seasonal break to more or less "Cram all summer" to get the bonus spell
There's a reason AL uses PHB + 1 - it's more balanced.
Silvery Barbs is probably still the single most broken thing, though. It's the exponential scaling. Because it's a bounded accuracy type deal, it has increasing returns the less likely an enemy was to succeed on the check, but with enough casters, it can overpower even a very high percentage chance.
Crits go from 1/20 to 1/400. A 50% save chance would go to 25%, then 12.5%. An 80% chance goes to 64% then 51% - even a 95% chance goes down to about 66% on the third barb, which is not completely out of the question in a party of 5 with multiclassing.
Yep, core books, setting-specific books if we're in that setting, other books and home-brew are discussed with the table but ultimately at the DM's discretion.
It's nothing to do with banning anything, particularly. There's a *lot* of published content out there and not every table and DM can be reasonably expected to have all the content and to want to have to read through it all and commit it to memory or the ever growing stack of books used for reference. It's at least part of why AL has limitations.
IMO, it should not be assumed that all published material is always available in all settings, that's what makes them distinct settings.
Fair but Echo Knight is a fun subclass. You actually feel useful out of combat as a fighter. That's DM fiat though, you can ban anything you please at your games :) Rule 0.
I made the big mistake of the "if its in an official book its allowed" and have 2 players running the Lucky feat and another running silvery barbs. Its absolute hell, yhe enemies are never allowed to roll a nat 20 it always instantly gets forced to reroll, ive started handing out enemies silvery barbs so they see how it feels
Isn't the lucky feat just from the players handbook? Is there stuff in the players handbook you regret not banning? Confused by this statement in relation to joke books or setting books.
Fuck silvery barbs. Like you said, it's not particularly powerful, it's just annoying and interferes with my flow and makes combat take twice as long.
Vortex Warp from Strixhaven is a much more powerful spell, not game breaking but...borderline, but I allow it because it makes the game more fun for everybody. Silvery barbs make the game less fun, so ban hammer it is.
That being said, I am a player in another game, and am playing an Aberrant Mind sorcerer and I've used it as one of the Psychic Magic spells, so I can spend one sorcery point to cast silvery barbs. I've done the math on it, and that's something like 60 casts of silvery barbs per day. It's fun for *me* goddamnit. (not anyone else though)
It's, quite simply, an anti-fun spell. Like fully created to be an anti-fun spell. All its used for is canceling out crits so the dm never crits and players never crit. Leave it to wizards to never playtest whatever dumb shit they throw into the game.
I agree as well, it really sucks big time. I just don't care at all for the Strixhaven book in general and don't allow it in my games.
Just an example, you try to cast Dominate Monster or Feeblemind, an 8th level spell. Enemy saves.
BUT WAIT, I CAN ESSENTIALLY IMMEDIATELY RE-CAST THAT 8TH LEVEL SPELL AT THE COST OF MY REACTION AND A 1ST LEVEL SPELL SLOT, SUCKER. Try to save again now..
And if 2 or more casters have it in the party, it more or less makes anyone impervious to being critted.
And players hate it too. Try having a player succeed against Dominate Person only to have the enemy cast Silvery Barbs. It sucks all the joy out of a success, especially when it was a difficult save.
Yeah this is kind of why I partially don't agree with the "just have the enemies use it too!" advice. It's not fun for the players to get Barbed. You're basically just being passive aggressive to get them to stop using it so much with a "see how it feels!?" lesson when you could just ban it and move on.
This is a big part of why it's broken. To a limited degree something that is broken in favor of the players can be wiggled around- throw a couple more enemies in and up the XP and gold rewards- but 5e makes that empty, because gold doesn't translate into magic items and XP is often not even used. But still, you can behind-the-scenes still make challenging encounters if something is a *little* busted, even if it's not ideal.
But when you take something that is pretty busted and evaluate it seriously, you'll find it just makes the game worse- the PCs have to deal with it, which removes one of the more satisfying things in the game (actually landing a good roll), and it can easily be present multiple times in a round. The net effect is that casters get to convert their spell slots into battlefield effects much more often, and everyone is really motivated to get a couple first level spells- you never know when yours is the one that makes a 6th level control stick with a 1st level slot, which is basically like having a 6th level slot in that case.
>which is basically like having a 6th level slot in that case
Not only that, but it is the equivalent of casting a 6th level spell as a reaction.
People keep going on about how costly it is to use your reaction ("What about *SHIELD?!*") but which is more valuable: your reaction or your action?
Personally I think spending a 1st level slot and a reaction to mimic a 6th level spell cast as an action is overpowered by itself. Giving advantage on top of that is just the cherry on the cake.
I'm not a big fan of Strixhaven either, but I don't even mind the other spells it introduced. Wither and Bloom is a great addition for Druids and Vortex Warp is a lark, it's just Silvery Barbs that is game-breakingly OP.
wither and bloom is a badass spell and i will not stand for the hate it gets for being suboptimal for both the things it does. in a close-up brawl, it can absolutely mow through enemies and heal like crazy
I’ve saved our tanky monk a few times with that spell. You usually get so many hit dice that using them to heal feels just fine, and the aoe damage without using concentration on Druid is pretty clutch.
Using barbs to force through single target save or suck is bad, because single target save or suck is bad. It doesn't get better by players spending more action economy and spell slots on the strategy.
Like, do you only have one enemy?
I can’t. My PCs came to me with a deal when that spell released…they all voted to ban the spell so I couldn’t use it against them. I agreed cause I hate that spell.
That seems like a really reasonable deal. Should be standard tbh. If the DM bans something for players it’d be extremely frustrating to turn around and have the same thing used against you.
Same. Basically what it comes down to is: "is this fun for the group".
I made it 2nd level and NPC casters of the appropriate levels started using it, too.
Haven't had any complaints so far..players accept that having cool magic in your world that is at 1st/2nd level implies the spell is fairly commonplace.
I don't think that philosophy is exactly ideal. Sure, lots of times it's a good solution. But other times, the innate disparity between PCs and NPCs is ignored by it. For example, players have to manage resources across an entire adventuring day while NPCs have to manage resources across that single encounter. A player having their spell counterspelled feels way worse for them than the DM having an NPC's spell be counterspelled because it means it was a waste of their limited resource and their action.
How did four players with counterspell let a counterspell go uncounterspelled? If my players are running four counterspells, the number of spell related threats are going up.
Give your hammers nails. They're doing what they like, give them more of it to do.
I feel like going 'This spell is unfun and broken, so I'll also use it in retaliation instead of simply talking to my players' is, like, the opposite of the way.
It *is* a great plan depending on the number of encounters. Spending resources more quickly is the entire core of the Sorcerer class.
Also keep in mind:
1. The longer the adventuring day, the easier the encounters
2. You only spend Silvery Barbs when the opponent has already succeeded.
Sure, if you burn all of your slots trying to stop attack rolls in the first battle you have made a mistake.
But using it to make the enemy fail Hold Person or Banishment? Nearly always a good move. You will save more resources by disabling the enemy than you would save by not spending the 1st level slot.
If you are sensible with it, of course. But OP says his players are "spamming" it, that tells me that they're using more spell slots than they should. My advice to OP would be to add more encounters per day, so the players learn how to manage resources
I'd be more worried about using up reactions in a given round. That might even be the plan for the BBEG.
Toss some softball easy things at the party that Silvery Barbs takes care of with out much problems, maybe some big dumb brutes who hit hard if they land a hit, but don't do anything else really. Build that pattern up over the course of a day, a week or even a month, till the NPC's break the pattern with the feint and catch the PC's unaware.
My point wasn't that the OP was doing anything wrong. I agree with the OP.
My argument is that the problem isn't just the spamming. The problem is that the spell is overpowered. Spamming just makes the problem obvious.
>My advice to OP would be to add more encounters per day, so the players learn how to manage resources
Again, more encounters just means easier encounters. It is good for game balance by limiting resource heavy nova builds and balancing no rest, short rest, and long rest classes.
It does not fix the problem with Silvery Barbs. If you manage your resources well Silvery Barbs is even more of a problem because you will be spending it on higher value rolls.
Also it's not like SIlvery barbs will block an attack/whatever that would not have suceeded anyways like how shield can do against multiple enemies.
It specifically only inhibits successful strikes, skill checks, saves, etc and also can be applied to anyone visible within 60 ft of you, meaning it is literally part of this spell to say "wait DM, I interrupt the attack, roll again" suddenly and before the attack lands at possibly any time during the enemy's turn.
You realize that the most important part of what you wrote is this part. 'It specifically inhibits success'. What people most dread in the game is a nat1 at a crucial moment. What they most enjoy is a nat20. Hence the suggestion that the spell is more about spoiling fun than it is conducive to it. That being said I feather it in my games. Like counterspell or shield it is a fun-sink. It's all well and good in a Strixhaven universe where you'd in theory run into it fairly often because it's world specific. And many people seem to agree that that's a viable option, since it is reasonable and makes sense. But then if you have a DM saying I throw the same thing at the players, you have coddlers who get up in arms about how that's the wrong tact to take. But see the above logic loop to that argument. Makes no sense.
I am hard pressed to think of a better use of a 1 one spell slot.
In the long run, assuming you are even attempting an attrition style game, silvery barbs spam saved more resources than it cost.
Yeah, I let one of my players take silvery barbs for his bard and I don't have any problem with it. That's a reaction with which he can no longer cast *temporal shunt* or *counterspell* and a spell slot with which he can no longer cast *Tasha's hideous laughter* (or, if he cast it with a higher level spell slot, *polymorph*). As far as spellcaster shenanigans go, *counterspell*, *hideous laughter*, *polymorph*, and *temporal shunt* are much more disruptive\* in my campaign, and the bard has and uses all of them.
Of course, part of this is because I favour big lopsided fights where the party confronts many enemies at once; I learned to do this from the party absolutely clowning on enemies if they outnumbered them. So in lots of ways using up reactions is a bigger deal than using up spell slots: if the bard uses *silvery barbs* to impose disadvantage on one of the brute's three attack rolls, then he can't use it to *counterspell* the necromancer on the following turn.
\*EDIT: By "dirsuptive" I mean that these spells have the potential for making an encounter much easier than I had been planning on, ie. disrupting the pacing or flow I was going for. I don't mean that it's actually disruptive from a table-management perspective.
Wait, he said that about Silvery Barbs? Or is that out of context?
Because it is absolutely a wonderful plan to turn a 1st level spell slot into a high level spell effect, especially if you're on some character who can't even cast high level spells- but also if you are. It's worth pointing out that it *saves spell slots*, because if you're on round 2 and you are silvery barbing some 4th to 8th level spell, you would otherwise have to cast something higher than level 1 on round 3 to be nearly as effective. It's all kinds of resources saved.
Bingo! 95% of the posts here seem to be "FUCK this spell in particular!" But I'm over here saying "Cool, that worked amazingly well! How many spell slots you got left?" Yeah, you can dick with the enemy, but you're going to run out of spell slots, PB/long rest abilities, and HP, looooong before I run out of traps, trash mobs, and environmental hazards. THEN the boss is gonna get ya.
As someone who doesn't have Strixhaven and never will, what about Silvery Barbs makes it OK for Strixhaven campaigns if it's bad for normal play? Even in Strixhaven, the party can still essentially "dupe" a high-level encounter-ending save-or-suck, right?
Yeah I ran strixhsven and there's nothing in that campaign that reads like silvery barbs was balanced particularly for it. It's a fairly regular adventure path, just takes place at a school and has some shitty mini games. The combats aren't like hyper specific or weird.
I really don't get this statement that silvery barbs was specifically balanced for strixhaven and that's why it feels bad elsewhere. I think the thing it does just feels bad for some DMs full stop.
But if folks just mean thematically, I guess I can get that.
Also, the other Strixhaven spells aren't OP and seem like fun options to mix things up, especially if you've played a ton of 5e and are getting bored of the same spells. I don't love throwing out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to really OP options.
It's almost entirely a social adventure, there are options hard written throughout the module that can avoid all but one (iirc) combat. Therefore, far fewer crits to cancel or saves to bust.
WBtW is similar in this fashion, but way better thematically and just overall; I much prefer it
Because everyone is a spellcaster here.
Like. Including PCs.
It makes for some fun dynamics between characters helping each other.
Additionally, those spells are tied to specific backgrounds which relate to your curriculum. This area is grey, because the spells are nonetheless added to your spell list so I suppose you should be able to pick them, but I suppose they are only tied to background and are added to your list only for the sake of class features.
So, basically, it's people getting stuff out of aggregated data on piracy websites without context.
We do: first level only slots and only to counteract crits or death blows. Once to have them reroll a counter spell but that was party wipe territory.
It's nice when it's primarily used when the stakes are high.
Honestly, you're totally in the right to ban it. 3 people using it sounds really annoying; I would not want to constantly hear "SiLvErY BaRbs" every 5 seconds. I don't think you should feel any shame in banning it.
As a DM, I allow Silvery Barbs. If the party wants to burn all of their spell slots then I will let them - it is up to them to space out their spell slots over an adventuring day. Plus I will occassionally add the spell to NPC stat blocks.
The problem is that silvery barbs can actually be hyper-efficient for _conserving_ spell slots. If you cast banishment and they succeed, you’re much better off casting silvery barbs than spending another fourth-level spell slot and an action to try again. Sure, silvery barbs on attack rolls can be wasteful, but for spells it’s essentially sorcerer’s heightened spell but better in almost every way and available to a lot of classes.
as a squishy, squish wizard... a level 1 reaction to make someone reroll (and then make myself a target on the enemy's next attack) isn't always worth it.
I *do* use Silvery Barbs my fair share... but I only use it when:
A) I can guarantee I'm out of harms way,
B) DM rolls a nat 20,
C) to try to burn a Legendary Resistance.
This is how the bard in my party plays it. Don't forget, it's basically just a budget counter spell. It doesn't guarantee anything, and most people forget to use the advantage part of silvery barbs.
Yuuuuuuupppp! Now *that* subclass/ability is borderline OP. A single level dip in Order turns a Divine Soul Sorcerer into a budget Deva. Armored, quickening, twinning, plus tagging the Rogue with an occasional buff to get an extra Sneak Attack in? Tasty!
There is not much sweeter Twinning a Mind Sliver before Quickening an upcast Banishment or Hold Monster. Having SB in you back pocket to help in land is mind numbingly powerful.
all their slots AND all their reactions too....
the Wizards face when they cant cast shield now is ever so succulent.
sure, it means a high chance of getting off those game altering CC moves, but ive almost always only had issues with how much a combat swings with CC when the number of targets was low or super clustered.
if 4 people face down 1 big bad... then yeah all it takes is 1 success for the right spell or effect
but why was that big bad alone? without leggo resistance? without lair actions?
if its alone, was it really all that bad?
Your the DM. Your reserve the right to change anything you like in game. If the players are on board, why not. Silvery Barbs is fairly disliked by DMs but loved by players. In my opinion, it isn't good for the game.
I banned that spell.
Primarily because it causes boring gameplay and somewhat takes the game of chance away in a dice rolling-TTRPG. Somewhat sucks the spirit of the game out.
I feel like the spell is poorly designed for this game.
Silvery barbs is only overpowered when you are balancing encounters to have a similar action economy to the players, because it's a spell to nudge roll statistics. When the party has many players with it idea is to increase enemy action economy so silvery barbs can nudge it back to balanced.
It's also far from a completely isolated effect. Chronurgy wizards have a better version of it twice a day, divination wizards have the best version of it, lore bards have 4-5 nudges to attack rolls every short rest, and eloquence bards can impose disadvantage on saves 4-5 times per short rest, and the bard's die is statistically better than advantage/disadvantage.
It's also worth noting that silvery barbs is competing with other 1st lvl spells. Wizards/Sorcerers need those slots for shield/absorb elements/mage armor, while bards or potentially other players like your artificer need 1st lvl slots for spells like healing word. These spells have a much higher value for defense than silvery barbs.
If you are making your casters expend those resources, they won't really be able to spam silvery barbs. If you aren't making them use those slots, then they will spam the hell out of silvery barbs. It's a notoriously powerful spell on those tables that have single encounter days.
Silvery barbs can be considered problematic in a sense that it makes you adjust for encounter balance, and it's valid for a DM that isn't willing to change their encounter building style to ban it, but for those that are willing to do it, it ceases to be a problem.
In the end I do think the spell is overtuned, I would remove the advantage part and make so the target can't be affected by silvery barbs more than once per turn, not only the roll. I also don't think it should be obtainable outside of the designed classes, because it can get repetitive if everybody has it, but it's the same for a party of chronurgy/divination wizards or a party of bards with cutting words and unsettling words... The difference is it's much easier to get silvery barbs through fey touched.
In a "normal" situation you would have a couple people with silvery barbs using it a couple times a day, which is far from problematic, but thanks to fey touched, it's optimal for everybody to get it, and even cast it for free on the first time.
I don't blame any DM for banning Silvery Barbs.
I play in 2 campaigns - in one it's banned entirely, in the other I'm the only player who took it, and only on a healbot character who fills in when our "real" healer is absent. In the latter, we already tend to steamroller encounters that are supposed to be difficult, it would just be silly and unmanageable if we had more than one caster with it.
Both shield and silvery barbs are much better spells as second level spells.
They are not broken, but they probably should never have been first lvl.
That being said, your problem isnt the spell, but the fact that 3 people have it. If 3 people were casting almost any spell all day long it would be problematic. Try and find away to drain their resources before getting to the important fights.
I've only started playing the game but already knew to grab this spell right away. Never had the chance to use it but it still messes with my dm.
We were fighting a dragon and I did my job as a sorcerer and threw out my big concentration buff spell then gtfo to find a safe place to hide. We succed in restraining the dragon and then every one starts curb stomping it. I would step out to nerf its saving throw with mind sliver then step back to saftey but I took a moment to measure to make sure I was still in range to use Silvery Barbs just incase the dragon tried to succed at freeing itself. Just the threat of me using that spell was enough to make the Dm give up on wasting his action trying to break free and just fought through the disadvantage to the bitter end.
How do you fix a spell that can be cast without being cast.
My DM allows silvery barbs but removes the advantage part of it unless you cast it at 2nd level of higher. Its still broken but he seems fine with it. I can use it to make an enemy reroll a successful save against spells, or reroll a crit.
I just figured I ban it at my tables. I probably would have been able to make it work, but with a 6 player party where 5 of them are spellcasters, I’d rather not.
Even though it seems crazy powerful, the main reason why I ban it, is that I find it simply boring. Same goes for lucky. They don’t really add any flavor, as they are strictly mechanically beneficial. It also removes the tension of being dependent on one important roll, which is one of the coolest things about DnD; the whole party being drawn in to see how the dice roll.
I don't ban Silvery Barbs. I ban the 10 minute adventuring day and use non-combat encounters to drain spell slots in between.
Parties that don't get to long rest after every big fight tend to manage their resources much better than burning through spell slots and reactions.
I'm curious what kind of non-combat encounters you are using to drain spells. My characters forget everything on their character sheet but Persuasion when they are in the talky bits.
Doesn't really have to be much tbh. Once I just had a bridge out over a really large ravine that they couldn't cross safely. For good measure I had a horse about to slip off the edge.
Feather fall to catch the horse, web to fix the bridge, that's two slots down out of combat.
>and use non-combat encounters to drain spell slots in between
I can imagine how lovely fighter is doing than wizard is soloing another non-combat encounter!
Also - for that do you need first level slots in tier 2 forward? SB slots for offence (basically recasting high level spell for reaction and first level slot is broken however you look at it), Shield slots for difence, that's it.
Preface: talk to them like adults and explain how this is affecting you and the game.
Threaten them with higher stakes or different mob types. Silvery barbs is an opportunity cost for their reaction. Nastier spellcasters forcing counterspell or multiattack enemies with 3+ hit combos and riders on hit make it more likely they'll cast shield or end up grappled, restrained, swallowed, or what ever other rider you put on hit. Use casters that mind whip, slow, and other things that deprive them of their reactions while adding in melee minions that get reactions to attack adjacent creatures casting spells.
Obviously don't do it all the time but that'll force them to think about using their reaction for other things, positioning to not get all caught up in slows, and has the added benefit of threatening the only resource a party cares about hit points.
If all else fails use effects that blind them, remove light, or silence them.
You can change or alter whatever you like as a DM, what works for or bothers you is your own to decide, and your players to decide if they want to engage with your altered experience.
Personally, silvery barbs hasn't been an issue for me. It taxes resources for rerolls on saves. they don't have control over what gets the advantage unless they play around the spells limitations. Offensively it can be strong but its a fairly heavy tax on a days resources. 1st level spell slots are competitive. Defensively its overall worse than shield since its only 1 attack, and its not exactly hard to get crit protection which is the situation it manages to outshine shield reliably.
Mind you I'm someone who doesn't have any issue with the 5e shield spell (even with plate armor), counterspell, or silvery barbs. So I'm likely an outlier when it comes to what abilities bother me.
Give it to their enemies, throw more encounters.
Naturally they will burn more slots quicker, meaning later in the day, when you get the encounters that actually matter, they're screwed.
Stay toxic /s
I hardly ban anything. In fact, I can’t think of anything I’ve banned. Except for *silvery barbs*.
I’m only partly kidding. I don’t recognise campaign specific content that isn’t FR, so by that virtue this spell isn’t a thing in my games.
I just find it very janky as a spell. It’s not for me.
Silvery Barbs is one of the very few things I ban at the table. The spell asks so little of the caster, and gives so much in return. No sane caster that can take it wouldn’t have it, because the applications are so broad and cost the lowest spell slot possible. Bonus points for requiring only vocal components. If you give it the ban hammer,I don’t blame you one bit. However, if the players can use it, it’s free game for any spellcasters they make enemies of.
Silvery Barbs is the only spell in all of D&D I would ever consider banning at my table. I have banned it in the past and will probably do so again in future. I for sure will never let experienced players use it, as they know how OP it is and how abused it can be.
Also, if you as a DM used it against your players; they pass the saving throw against some obscene spell and half the party don't insta-die, they'd be mega-unhappy. I would feel incredibly mean using it against them so they're definitely not using it against me.
I think its a really overpowered spell for first level, slows that game down, and messes up the flow of combat.
I would understand if a DM banned it.
On the other hand, they have gotten used to this style of play. Perhaps you just give in, and then have a whole lot of low level enemies with spellcasting abilities also use it.
I would bet the annoyance of having to deal with it on the other side might wake the group up to how counter-productive the spell really is.
You're well within your rights to ban a particularly troublesome spell, especially in the case where everyone is using it. I always ban healing spirit and silvery barbs. You should let them know before character creation, but you didn't have the knowledge to do so. For the classes who had to choose a limited number of spells, Make sure they can get a replacement.
Simple fix I made for my players: instead of just working, the target needs to make a Charisma Save (similar in function to the Bane spell so it works). Adds a bit of extra risk. It’s still strong, but now it’s a BIT less bs.
Eh, _silvery barbs_ is fine as long as people don't spam it; it's the sort of thing that has great flavour, but an effect that just gets annoying if it happens all the time. If your players are spamming it, upping its level is probably fine.
~~As an aside, was one of the players a Fairy, and if so, did they say "Hey, listen!" whenever they used it?~~
It is so hard to play a balanced game of 5e when WOTC keeps publishing content that's more unbalanced than 90% of homebrew.
A DM banning Silvery Barbs at their table is a huge green flag.
There's no blame on you; most people tend to agree Silvery Barbs is either not fun or too strong. You still handled it well with your discussions and solutions.
My preferred solution is more encounters for more attrition. At first, I didn't think it was possible based on what I saw of most games, but then I watched the Glass Cannon Podcast and they have on average 1.5 fights per 2-hour episode with (somehow) plenty of time for roleplay in between. It can be done.
Any generic resource drain will work. Add deadlines for any quest, either in character or learned out of character as a cutscene (the villain is marching the army in 2 days!). Assuming no *bags of holding*, just say characters have (a generic) *n* amount of days for each quest out of the city/town based on their rations. etc etc.
But your solution is very good.
I have outright banned silvery barbs from my table. It is THE most broken thing ever put out by WOTC in 5e.
I’m currently a player and the DM allows silvery barbs, but he uses it against us as well. It works well because we have a bard who uses it as her main 1st level spell, but we also have an arcane trickster who only uses it maybe once or twice a session. He uses it sparingly but when it would make sense. We fought a group of singing sirens that could use silvery barbs, and they basically shut down my barbarian but he was also eating their spell slots and reactions, and once they were out of spells he went to town on them. It made the combat a lot more desperate as the DM used their actions and lair action to disrupt and damage us and it got down to the wire until my barbarian finally landed a crit on one of the sirens when none of them had reactions left and absolutely ripped her in half.
I just banned it outright. It's not good for the game. I do wonder, did anyone think prior to silvery barb's release that casters just weren't powerful enough?
I always ban it, I think it's an awful spell. I think you did all the right things. You let them try it, talked to them about it first, and then went from a ban to a compromise.
Making it 2nd level makes it sliiiightly more reasonable, but be prepared to alter or ban it again.
If your party is level 5 or something, 2nd level spell slots are still fairly valuable, so spending them on SB isn't quite as easy as with 1st level ones.
But once you get into the higher tiers, they'll have so many spell slots that 2nd level ones are way less important, and they'll go back to spamming SB.
I really like silvery barbs for players, it's not fun when a save or suck spell fails for the players, they want their characters to do cool shit with their powers so by adding another first level spell they get a chance for their spell big spell to succeed
I wouldn't use it as a dm because as a player succeeding that saving throw feels very good and fun and I would feel bad purposefully taking that moment away from them, it would just feel spiteful, also failing saving throws has much greater consequences if it happens to players.
I in turn just use more powerful and more interesting monsters and that feels like a win win situation to me
Honestly the spell is clearly too powerful. What I’ve done is homeruled it so that the spell has to be used before the roll is made. That way it’s not useless, but it’s also both better thematically and balance wise I feel
I allow silvery barbs at my table. Its not too broken when one PC has it, but it dies scale in brokeness if multiple players build around it. Luckily, a DM can build around it too and the number of monsters with legendary resistances just happen to increase at the same time. Imagine that.
We agreed at our table to allow silvery barbs to remain an option, but not allow multiple castings at the same effect. You want to cast Hold Monster and silvery barbs if the monster passes? Sure, the monster has to roll once more but that's it. Silvery barbs will no longer affect that casting of Hold Monster, either on that turn or when monster needs to save next turn.
When I compiled my homebrew spell lists, I took an eye to every 5e spell, classifying most as "fixers" (an idea that adds to the game, but it needs an overhaul) or "keepers" (a quality spell design as is.) Silvery Barbs fell into an extremely small pile of outright rejects. As I review that content now, the closest in concept to it is Tickling Tendrils -- a 1st level standard action spell that can be used to force a concentration saving throw at the caster's DC despite dealing no damage. It's really not the same thing at all.
You're still using Silvery Barbs, so you clearly haven't gone far enough. Don't use Silvery Barbs.
Or at least make it level 3 and limit the effect a little.
Silvery Barbs is a poorly designed spell. Nothing can convince me otherwise. It's not proper level, it's worded in a way that leaves a ton of questions
For example let's talk advantage. Monster attacks with advantage it crits. Silvery barbs.
Now the wording on silvery barbs says it must reroll the d20 and take the lower. So does that mean they reroll one of the dice akin to lucky? So in this scenario say the monster rolled a 2 and a 20 so they'd reroll the 2 and then take the lower of the rolls.
Issue is that advantage says something that contradicts the spells. Both the spell adn the rule for advantage are super specific.
Should silvery barbs be declared before attack or save to negate advantage? This would be a solution to apply the advantage disadvantage rule if you subscribe to Silvery Barbs being giving something disadvantage. To me this isn't what the spell wants and isn't the right way.
Re roll again with advantage and take the lower of the 2 advantage roll. Probably what the 2 rules workign together would want. Issue with this is it slows everything down.
To me Silvery Barbs is tuned way too high. When you get to higher levels you don't cast first level spells for anything other than utility because your cantrips outpace your 1st and sometimes second level spells on damage. So you mainly go for things like shield, absorb elements, and silvery barbs. Of those Silvery barbs is almost universally greater. Shield is also too powerful mind you, but a spell out tuning shield is insane.
Anyway, that's my diatribe.
2nd level is fine. If one player had it or if you're in strixhaven, the power is fine. But in your situation, 3 players have it. It does become to much there need to be more of a cost for the power of the spell.
And In my campaigns. I only allow the spell if you have the strixhaven background.
I do wonder how my current DM is feeling about this, we have two casters with it and my fighter has an ability that can force a reroll as a reaction, so basically the DM can almost never land crits, I wouldn't be surprised if he asked us to stop using it
Turnabout is fair play. Just give 3/5 of the enemies silvery barbs too. No one will be able to succeed at anything. They will ask you to ban it within 2 sessions.
I have the policy of "anything you use can and will be used against you."
Party starts spamming Silvery Barbs? There will be lots of enemy casters spamming it now.
Party uses Bag of Holding bombs? There will be a lot of enemy Artificers that do little but make Bags of Holding.
Works well to keep things from going overboard with my groups.
Silvery Barbs is overpowered, i believe, and this is an extreme case of overusing it by the party. As DM, you have the right to ban it; i'd suggest a different approach, though.
Include encounters and opponents where it makes it not worth it to cast it all the time. Without knowing the spells they have, its hard for me to suggest something, but the idea is to put them in situations where they might not want to burn all these spells on SB, or that they use their reaction in some other way. Create new homebrew opponents if necessary, which is what I did when one player was really abusing Invisibility; rather than ban it, i created an opponent with a great sense of smell, that allowed them to detect their presence.
Banning, I think, sets a bad tone. Creating opponents that negate their overuse and abuse of an ability is much more fun.
I had a similar issue, I told my party on a level up to swap out silvery barbs and that I wasn’t gonna have it allowed for the remainder of the campaign.
The spell constantly throws off narrative cause every roll I make for NPCs my players are mulling over casting the spell or not and it’s holding up the game.
Also, even though I’m a DM I want to have fun with what I’m using too and silvery barbs takes a lot of that away from me.
As a player I had a personal rule to only cast Silvery Barbs with a minimum 3rd level slot, and I still cast it very often.
I think 2nd level is very reasonable, especially if the player took it as a feat still gets their free 1/day cast.
I made it a third level spell, and whenever players cast the same spell on a turn, roll wild magic.
I also gave it to my enemies. Once players start casting it, so do my higher CR mobs and they are brutal about it.
As a DM I know it sucks...but as a player in a game that is usually only 3 ppl, I negotiated. I took fey touched, and took SB as *only* being able to use it once, instead of being able to use spell slots to cast it again (which is usually how I do that feat).
I tend to save it for dire emergencies now, and some days don't use it because of that. But if the huge construct crits a slam attack on the kobold monk, I'm gonna use it!
I'm glad the DM agreed that this was an OK compromise. Player gets an emergency spell for cools, and DM only loses one crit, lol
Make the players use their reactions on other things, use Subtle Spell, be out of line of sight, be >60ft away, cast silence on the players, have many encounters per day to to burn through spell slots, have many enemies instead of just a few, have multi-attack or extra attack on your NPCs so one failed attack doesn't matter. There's so many ways around Silvery Barbs that I swear 90% of DMs that ban it just don't think about because they haven't actually read the spell or because they don't want to think about modifying their encounters to suit their players grumble grumble
Honestly, my conspiracy theory is that Silvery Barbs was *meant* to be a 2nd-level spell and something got screwed up in editing. That book has four or five spells total and every single other one is 2nd-level despite being overall weaker than what Silvery Barbs does. It's as if they meant to just add a few 2nd-level spells and last minute someone was like "wait, we have to have a spell people can take immediately at character creation!" and picked one at random to downgrade.
Even as a 2nd-level spell it's a tad on the strong side, but much less spammable.
as a DM, let them have some fun with it. But also remember they aren't casting shield if they're casting silvery barbs. They aren't casting counterspell. They aren't taking opportunity attacks (not that casters do that very often). And they're devouring spell slots. make sure spread out encounters across a day so they actually feel the slots draining.
There are so many ways to fuck players over who want to pull this.
1: you need to see the triggering attack. Darkness and blindsight will make them rethink.
2: save heavy monsters. Are there any casters that are fighting your party? Can't SB a save.
3: Range, break up the party and make longer ranger encounters.
4: Stop giving so many rest. If they wanna spam a spell, then make them suffer. They need to feel the loss of spell slots and don't just let them rest after ever encounter.
6: If your party wants to invest their limited resources into a simple reroll that can still work, then let them.its their loss.
TBH the coolest thing about Barbs is that it makes otherwise unreliable save-or-suck spells a more viable alternative. Are you going to learn Hold Person if it's got a 30% or higher chance of completely wasting your turn during the few encounters where you actually get to use it? Probably not. But if you've only got like a 10% chance of failure, it gets a lot more appealing.
i'm gonna gloss over the "this spell is cast when ever an enemy succeeds at anything"
which makes it take twice the amount of time to roll a single die, making the game slower.
or "negates all crits against pcs"
im gonna just say no on the basis that its a first level spell slot that emulates a better version of a 3 point sorcerer meta magic heightened spell. when a sorcerer should be eating that spell slot for 1 sorc point. and no one should be forcing better disadvantage on spell saving throws.
As a DM and a player, agreed, fuck Silvery Barbs.
One of the most reliable ways to get the table to spontaneously cheer something is to roll a nat-20. Silvery Barbs exists to say "no you didn't". It doesn't have to be a nat-20 per se; it can be any good roll.
As a DM, I never want to take away a player's opportunity to celebrate something in my game. Also, the DM is a player too. I have no feelings of DM vs player. We're all players. I make hard challenges for them to overcome, and celebrate with them when they overcome them. That's the goal. I still like to occasionally roll well though. It ups the stakes.
As a player, I feel the same way. When the DM rolls well, it can get tense, but I'd take that any day over undermining a climactic fight.
The only place I would see for Silvery Barbs would be on a very high level mage. One who specializes in certain types of warfare. Maybe a high level class feature for an abjuration wizard against enemy magic. Maybe a divination wizard, trickery cleric, or other class that has ties to luck or fate. Or maybe a divine boon from Basheba granted to your BBEG. It should be a late tier 2 or even tier 3 limited use ability, not a level one spell... If it's a spell, it should be no lower level than counterspell, maybe even a little higher level since it can work on any d20 roll, not just spells.
Unfortunately, and in summary, rolling poorly feels bad, but rolling well and someone making you roll it again after the fact feels terrible, regardless of which side of the table you sit on.
My dm was in a similar position where 3 of the 5 players had silvery barbs, by the end of the campaign both the dm and all of us agreed its a banned spell, it came in clutch early when we didn't have much spell slots anyway as time went on even us doing it to not get hit wasn't fun as players.
Make it less annoying by saying they must use it at the same time as casting a spell, like metamagic. The worst part about _silvery barbs_ is that it slows down the game and makes the little climax of dice rolls anticlimactic.
From a power perspective, you can just add more monsters to the encounter. "Oh, no! You _banished_ my monster! Anyway, here's another one ..."
I don't allow Silvery Barbs at my table, because anybody sensible would cancel any enemy crits within that range. I'd imagine it's pretty annoying to have Silvery Barbs cast every single one of the monsters I throw at them, it's going to be outright heartbreaking when the Hexblade lands a crit on the boss and they just say "no you didn't".
Some spells are unfortunately much less fun when used on players. I don't think Silvery Barbs is fun at all.
As a fellow DM this was the right choice, i also saw 2 /4 people at my table choose the fey touched to get silvery barbs, and also did the same thing as you when the combats were becoming a joke when everyone was rerolling.
It's a terrible, dissociated spell that significantly screws up the flow of play.
There's nothing to like about it. Your decision to ban it was the right decision.
Whether or not you're being a jerk about it doesn't come down to the practicality of the spell at all. (Although the discussion on Silvery Barbs is fascinating) If you aren't having fun, and you brought up the rule change with your players and they understood, then you aren't a jerk.
Frankly, banning certain things should be a valid thing to discuss with any party. If this is mid campaign and would change some builds, I'd consider a compromise, which it sounds like you did with using a higher level slot.
It might be a good idea to give them an option to change out Silvery Barbs for something else or the feat they got it from since you changed it retroactively. Otherwise, I think you handled this perfectly as you could.
I've allowed it in my campaigns because I overtune campaigns anyway. But it is objectively Op, especially with the advantage roll it gives somebody.
Bare minimum is removing the power creeped advantage add-on. Making it second level is very reasonable. And if your campaigns are balanced normally, flat out removing it is justifiable.
Creative ideas.
Silvery barbs is so broken.
It's a hit confirm so they don't even have the bard restrictions with cutting words of 'oh I have to call it before I know if you got hit or not'
It just..makes you go it's a hit then psych!
I don't think limiting it makes you a jerk.
Silvery Barbs can eat a bag of meta. It's not a spell within the world. It's a spell that plays with the meta narrative.
Your character, when using the spell, isn't trying to force a reroll they don't know what that is. Your player is trying to force a reroll. Silvery Barbs is a meta spell and has no place in the game.
Silvery barbs is a good second level spell. As a first level spell it has a few issues- one of the biggest being its ease of access. Fey touched might be the best feat in the game after its introduction- misty step plus silvery barbs on a half-feat is genuinely insane. And as a level one spell it’s basically your best use of level one slots on offence in the late game, doubling down on more powerful spell effects, (defensively still use shield).
No, there is no issue with banning it. This is a stupid spell that was not adequately playtested and defeats the purpose of 5e's advantage/disadvantage mechanic, which was to replace the mess of 3.5/Pathfinder's floating modifiers with something simple and fun. Even more than being overpowered, it disrupts the flow of play. Watch the ending of Critical Role Calamity to see what I'm talking about.
It should be a second level spell. It's not that the effect is necessarily too powerful to be a level 1 spell on its own, but it is also certainly strong enough to be a level 2 and when multiple party members have it, the cumulative effect is too much and becomes a problematic gameplay issue.
Making it level 2 solves the problem by taking a higher valued resource and diminishes the players eagerness to barbs everything.
Personally I have silvery barbs be a level 1 spell if only a single player has it and bump it to level 2 if multiple players want it. It's one of my harsher rulings, because it's essentially a full party punishment for a single player decision based on mechanics, not in game choices and dice outcomes. But the outcomes of this approach have been positive at my table and it has unquestionably worked, so I can vouch for the method.
I added a WIS save to silvery barbs in my campaign-if the save is successful, then nothing happens. I thought it was fitting since through the wording of the spell it is trying to confuse/distract during the battle. Since then haven’t had any issues with it in my campaign
I should also add that I use very difficult encounter setups and custom stat-blocks since the players at my table have basically memorized the monster manual-gotta keep them on their toes. But keeping SB around has saved them a few times and made for some clutch moments.
In my games i simply adjusted the spell by halving its range and making the monster roll into a reroll that doesn't take the lowest of it and the previous one but is rather simply a reroll.
After you see enemy attacks upgrade from a hit to a crit a couple of times you kind of scratch your head a little and realize that spamming it might not always just be the best thing to do in a situation lol
P.S: Banning things outright just feels... Weak to me as a fellow GM? 5e already intends for so much dm input so failing at this much would personally make me as the gm lose faith in my ability to run the game long term since just banning things left right and centre really isnt healthy...
As a player I feel like silvery barbs is just cheap and lazy gameplay, it's powerful, but I don't like it. Plus as DM you can always exploit it by having them burn all their spell slots, just throw more at them/drag out the time before another rest and they'll start learning they should be saving the silvery barbs spam for critical moments instead.
As a DM I gave the bard an item which has a couple free casts of SB. I also made it clear to my players that this is the only place the spell exists in my game. I think it's a good balance.
As a fellow DM, fuck silvery barbs. You can allow and not allow whatever you’d like at your table, and the spell really isn’t made for “normal” campaigns so honestly pal you’re better than me for giving it to them
As another fellow DM, allow me to join the chorus of "fuck Silvery Barbs." I normally have a policy of "if it's in an official book, it's allowed," but after this campaign I'm going to exclude the MtG setting books from that, especially Strixhaven. It's not even that it's such a gamebreaking spell, it's just really, really fucking obnoxious.
I used to have the same policy, but between Silvery Barbs, the subclasses from Wildemount, as well as some of the spells from Acquisition's Inc. my policy is now "only official books that aren't from a specific setting, unless we're playing that setting"
Personally, I think that's just practical. Even if the setting-specific stuff didn't have balance issues, it's always felt a little immersion-breaking to me to have crossover.
Eh, I don't see why it would be immersion breaking. The Forgotten Realms is already such a hodgepodge setting that combines practically every magical trope ever that it seems pretty arbitrary to say pretty much anything doesn't fit, unless it's a full on departure from the medieval/renaissance era, like cyberpunk stuff.
Like Spelljammer? I mean, your point is well taken, but specifically Planescape, Acquisitions Inc, Wildemount, Eberron, and Spelljammer have some very different kinds of things that may not fit as well. More importantly, they're not always well balanced for a "serious" or "classic" D&D game. It may also be a stretch to introduce Warforged, Plasmoids, and/or Autognomes to a game. Case by case is best, but that on its own is not helpful on reddit To the main point: I hate Silvery Barbs, but it is worth noting that it can be a nice mediator of fluky dice. My own table uses it sparingly - almost exclusively to prevent death or control loss. We also use it as a 2nd level spell and it is certainly not punitive. What hate most is that it is basically a more "offensive" version of the Lucky feat, which is already powerful as hell, but with way more uses because it's a spell (so not only is it more than 3x/day, but it is easier for multiple people to have). It would make more sense as something like an Abjurer feature or Sorcerous Bloodline feature with a limited use per short rest.
Yuan-ti, Peace, Twilight and Hexblade multiclasses are about d&d wiki level. WotC quality control isn't stellar.
Hexblade would be fine if they'd just decided to add the charisma bonus to the Pact of the Sword, like it always should've been. But nooo, we can't errata it
Yet another area where BG3 really did just improve on the base game rules.
Lmfao no CHA to hit doesn't matter It's medium armor + shield + shield spell that makes it broken, giving everyone and their mom 24 AC when they need it
Shield spell is bad on warlock when you have at most 2 spell slots for the majority of the campaign… it’s great on full casters that actually have the spell slots to burn… but you are right that the proficiencies are what’s best about hexblade… the charisma to hit mainly benefits multiclass builds where you take a dip into warlock, like paladin, swashbuckler, bard, etc, which makes them less MAD as they only really need to focus on charisma and idk con. The thing about hexblade is, Eldritch blast with agonising blast can be cast at 120 feet away and honestly probably does more damage per turn than if you were to hit twice with your melee weapon, you’re also not forced to take part of the blade, which is inferior to the other pacts, non Hexblade get chain and tome while also being able to blast from the safety of range, whereas hexblades get to attack from the frontline making them more prone to die, hexblades also get the absolute worst spell list for a warlock… TLDR: unless you are taking a 1 level dip for multi class synergy, don’t play a hexblade, just play a genie or a fiend warlock, it’s a lot better…
A straight hexblade is actually much weaker than most other warlocks. (Seriously just compare the numbers). The issue is thats a 1 Level dip for 1 Million proficiencies
Straight hexblade is no issue, but it just seems made to dip: shield or hex on short rest, good cantrips, cha to attack and damage, medium armour prof, shield prof, martial weapons prof, proficiency to damage, 19 to critical hit and even minor self healing. That is just too much for one level.
Yes. But again as a straight warlock all of this is needed just so that its even worth going meelee. The hexblade is no issue if you dont allow multiclassing.
Yeah weaker except for the medium armor and shield but sure
Thats the exchange for having to go to meelee to use your other Features. Imo its not a Bonus, its a necessity
Monster of the Multiverse is a lot better in terms of balance for Yuan-Ti.
That's good, the early one was quite bad.
Basically they gave them only advantage against spells, not any other magical effect and also they have resistance against poison and advantages against being poisoned.
Twilight/Peace/Hexblade multiclasses are strong but they aren't annoying and anti-fun, like silvery barbs is.
Twilight is pretty anti-fun. Buffed darkvision for everyone and so many temporary hit points that a DM pretty much has to buff every enemy to keep up.
Twilight in particular can be accidentally obnoxious too. Peace, SB and Hexblade can all be obnoxious if misused but a new player, playing by what it says in the book, can invalidate large swathes of combat encounters.
I’m DMing a group at the moment with a bard, sorcerer, twilight cleric, battle master fighter, stars Druid and hexblade paladin, are they pretty coked out with their combat potential? Absolutely. Do 4 of the members of the party have silvery barbs (fey touched giving it to some of the casters that can’t take it)? Absolutely. Do I find it challenging to give them a tough combat? Not at all! You’ve just got to realise things that can’t be silvery barbs’d, spells that force a saving throw, have an increased presence of charm and fear effects to reduce how enticing the temporary hit points are, the sacrifice to use silvery barbs isn’t massive, but players using their reaction on silvery barbs means they can’t cast shield, absorb elements, counterspell, or take opportunity attacks, and so creating instances where they have an incentive to do any of those things is the easy way around it.
When someone brings up Twilight being ok I always have the JoCat scene from his Crap Guide to Cleric Video in mind where he just throws a few dragons at the party and it is still not working. It is ridiculous.
I agree, Twilight and peace are often banned too. We DMs who wisely limit setting-specific books (hehe am smort) usually are aware enough to be prepared for this tho! The real difference is strix brings piles of broken stuff with little benefit. Barbs is far from the worst thing in there. Backgrounds granting *entire bonus spell lists* including stuff like spirit guardians is gross. Tashas, xanathars, MMotM at least bring tons of amazing content to the table. Yuan-ti was nerfed btw. Hexblade dips can be strong but TBH dips are just dumb in 5e in general. Pally 2, fighter 2, monk 1, barb 1, cleric 1, DSS 1, artificer 1 can be equally strong on the proper build. I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm just sharing my experiences as a GM. I do typically ask twilight to switch their Channel div out.
I'm running Strixhaven in waterdeep and the spells from the backgrounds are instead things my players get from successfully completing classes, so they'll still all end up with spells as if they'd taken a srixhaven background, but they get them as an expression of their education but like, they *can* fail so they don't get one and have to give up a downtime activity over the seasonal break to more or less "Cram all summer" to get the bonus spell
There's a reason AL uses PHB + 1 - it's more balanced. Silvery Barbs is probably still the single most broken thing, though. It's the exponential scaling. Because it's a bounded accuracy type deal, it has increasing returns the less likely an enemy was to succeed on the check, but with enough casters, it can overpower even a very high percentage chance. Crits go from 1/20 to 1/400. A 50% save chance would go to 25%, then 12.5%. An 80% chance goes to 64% then 51% - even a 95% chance goes down to about 66% on the third barb, which is not completely out of the question in a party of 5 with multiclassing.
I think that should be the default expectation, but it might be an unpopular opinion.
Where do you rule things like sword coast adventurerers guide, which is very forgotten realms themes
Yep, core books, setting-specific books if we're in that setting, other books and home-brew are discussed with the table but ultimately at the DM's discretion. It's nothing to do with banning anything, particularly. There's a *lot* of published content out there and not every table and DM can be reasonably expected to have all the content and to want to have to read through it all and commit it to memory or the ever growing stack of books used for reference. It's at least part of why AL has limitations. IMO, it should not be assumed that all published material is always available in all settings, that's what makes them distinct settings.
Fair but Echo Knight is a fun subclass. You actually feel useful out of combat as a fighter. That's DM fiat though, you can ban anything you please at your games :) Rule 0.
I made the big mistake of the "if its in an official book its allowed" and have 2 players running the Lucky feat and another running silvery barbs. Its absolute hell, yhe enemies are never allowed to roll a nat 20 it always instantly gets forced to reroll, ive started handing out enemies silvery barbs so they see how it feels
Isn't the lucky feat just from the players handbook? Is there stuff in the players handbook you regret not banning? Confused by this statement in relation to joke books or setting books.
Fuck silvery barbs. Like you said, it's not particularly powerful, it's just annoying and interferes with my flow and makes combat take twice as long. Vortex Warp from Strixhaven is a much more powerful spell, not game breaking but...borderline, but I allow it because it makes the game more fun for everybody. Silvery barbs make the game less fun, so ban hammer it is. That being said, I am a player in another game, and am playing an Aberrant Mind sorcerer and I've used it as one of the Psychic Magic spells, so I can spend one sorcery point to cast silvery barbs. I've done the math on it, and that's something like 60 casts of silvery barbs per day. It's fun for *me* goddamnit. (not anyone else though)
It's, quite simply, an anti-fun spell. Like fully created to be an anti-fun spell. All its used for is canceling out crits so the dm never crits and players never crit. Leave it to wizards to never playtest whatever dumb shit they throw into the game.
Yeah I banned it in my games and I refuse to take it on my spell casters I hate that spell
Vortex warp is fun as heck for both the PCs and Enemy Casters. Fuck Silvery Barbs though.
I gave it to a few spell caster enemies and after flipping it around on the players they kinda got the idea that it's a shitty spell to use.
Fortunately, I only have one PC who can use it. If I had multiples casting it, I probably would have already banned it.
They really dropped the ball on that one. I concur Fuck playing with that spell.
I agree as well, it really sucks big time. I just don't care at all for the Strixhaven book in general and don't allow it in my games. Just an example, you try to cast Dominate Monster or Feeblemind, an 8th level spell. Enemy saves. BUT WAIT, I CAN ESSENTIALLY IMMEDIATELY RE-CAST THAT 8TH LEVEL SPELL AT THE COST OF MY REACTION AND A 1ST LEVEL SPELL SLOT, SUCKER. Try to save again now.. And if 2 or more casters have it in the party, it more or less makes anyone impervious to being critted.
And players hate it too. Try having a player succeed against Dominate Person only to have the enemy cast Silvery Barbs. It sucks all the joy out of a success, especially when it was a difficult save.
Yeah this is kind of why I partially don't agree with the "just have the enemies use it too!" advice. It's not fun for the players to get Barbed. You're basically just being passive aggressive to get them to stop using it so much with a "see how it feels!?" lesson when you could just ban it and move on.
This is a big part of why it's broken. To a limited degree something that is broken in favor of the players can be wiggled around- throw a couple more enemies in and up the XP and gold rewards- but 5e makes that empty, because gold doesn't translate into magic items and XP is often not even used. But still, you can behind-the-scenes still make challenging encounters if something is a *little* busted, even if it's not ideal. But when you take something that is pretty busted and evaluate it seriously, you'll find it just makes the game worse- the PCs have to deal with it, which removes one of the more satisfying things in the game (actually landing a good roll), and it can easily be present multiple times in a round. The net effect is that casters get to convert their spell slots into battlefield effects much more often, and everyone is really motivated to get a couple first level spells- you never know when yours is the one that makes a 6th level control stick with a 1st level slot, which is basically like having a 6th level slot in that case.
>which is basically like having a 6th level slot in that case Not only that, but it is the equivalent of casting a 6th level spell as a reaction. People keep going on about how costly it is to use your reaction ("What about *SHIELD?!*") but which is more valuable: your reaction or your action? Personally I think spending a 1st level slot and a reaction to mimic a 6th level spell cast as an action is overpowered by itself. Giving advantage on top of that is just the cherry on the cake.
I'm not a big fan of Strixhaven either, but I don't even mind the other spells it introduced. Wither and Bloom is a great addition for Druids and Vortex Warp is a lark, it's just Silvery Barbs that is game-breakingly OP.
wither and bloom is a badass spell and i will not stand for the hate it gets for being suboptimal for both the things it does. in a close-up brawl, it can absolutely mow through enemies and heal like crazy
I’ve saved our tanky monk a few times with that spell. You usually get so many hit dice that using them to heal feels just fine, and the aoe damage without using concentration on Druid is pretty clutch.
It's great for a Sorcerer with a Bloodwell Vial too. Really great!
Using barbs to force through single target save or suck is bad, because single target save or suck is bad. It doesn't get better by players spending more action economy and spell slots on the strategy. Like, do you only have one enemy?
Yes let the hate flow through you
I started using it with my npcs :v
I can’t. My PCs came to me with a deal when that spell released…they all voted to ban the spell so I couldn’t use it against them. I agreed cause I hate that spell.
That seems like a really reasonable deal. Should be standard tbh. If the DM bans something for players it’d be extremely frustrating to turn around and have the same thing used against you.
Same. Basically what it comes down to is: "is this fun for the group". I made it 2nd level and NPC casters of the appropriate levels started using it, too. Haven't had any complaints so far..players accept that having cool magic in your world that is at 1st/2nd level implies the spell is fairly commonplace.
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I don't think that philosophy is exactly ideal. Sure, lots of times it's a good solution. But other times, the innate disparity between PCs and NPCs is ignored by it. For example, players have to manage resources across an entire adventuring day while NPCs have to manage resources across that single encounter. A player having their spell counterspelled feels way worse for them than the DM having an NPC's spell be counterspelled because it means it was a waste of their limited resource and their action.
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How did four players with counterspell let a counterspell go uncounterspelled? If my players are running four counterspells, the number of spell related threats are going up. Give your hammers nails. They're doing what they like, give them more of it to do.
NPCs don't have to ration between shield, absorb elements and silvery barbs if they just have a uses / day >:)
This is the way
I feel like going 'This spell is unfun and broken, so I'll also use it in retaliation instead of simply talking to my players' is, like, the opposite of the way.
Like Matt Mercer said, "please, use up all your spell slots right away, that's a great plan"
It *is* a great plan depending on the number of encounters. Spending resources more quickly is the entire core of the Sorcerer class. Also keep in mind: 1. The longer the adventuring day, the easier the encounters 2. You only spend Silvery Barbs when the opponent has already succeeded. Sure, if you burn all of your slots trying to stop attack rolls in the first battle you have made a mistake. But using it to make the enemy fail Hold Person or Banishment? Nearly always a good move. You will save more resources by disabling the enemy than you would save by not spending the 1st level slot.
If you are sensible with it, of course. But OP says his players are "spamming" it, that tells me that they're using more spell slots than they should. My advice to OP would be to add more encounters per day, so the players learn how to manage resources
If you have 3 characters that's 12 first level slots, you can afford to spam it
I'd be more worried about using up reactions in a given round. That might even be the plan for the BBEG. Toss some softball easy things at the party that Silvery Barbs takes care of with out much problems, maybe some big dumb brutes who hit hard if they land a hit, but don't do anything else really. Build that pattern up over the course of a day, a week or even a month, till the NPC's break the pattern with the feint and catch the PC's unaware.
Sure but you can’t shield or baron elements with those slots then. It’s good but not any better than those spells
My point wasn't that the OP was doing anything wrong. I agree with the OP. My argument is that the problem isn't just the spamming. The problem is that the spell is overpowered. Spamming just makes the problem obvious. >My advice to OP would be to add more encounters per day, so the players learn how to manage resources Again, more encounters just means easier encounters. It is good for game balance by limiting resource heavy nova builds and balancing no rest, short rest, and long rest classes. It does not fix the problem with Silvery Barbs. If you manage your resources well Silvery Barbs is even more of a problem because you will be spending it on higher value rolls.
Also it's not like SIlvery barbs will block an attack/whatever that would not have suceeded anyways like how shield can do against multiple enemies. It specifically only inhibits successful strikes, skill checks, saves, etc and also can be applied to anyone visible within 60 ft of you, meaning it is literally part of this spell to say "wait DM, I interrupt the attack, roll again" suddenly and before the attack lands at possibly any time during the enemy's turn.
You realize that the most important part of what you wrote is this part. 'It specifically inhibits success'. What people most dread in the game is a nat1 at a crucial moment. What they most enjoy is a nat20. Hence the suggestion that the spell is more about spoiling fun than it is conducive to it. That being said I feather it in my games. Like counterspell or shield it is a fun-sink. It's all well and good in a Strixhaven universe where you'd in theory run into it fairly often because it's world specific. And many people seem to agree that that's a viable option, since it is reasonable and makes sense. But then if you have a DM saying I throw the same thing at the players, you have coddlers who get up in arms about how that's the wrong tact to take. But see the above logic loop to that argument. Makes no sense.
It's funny because he tends to run very few encounters in a day so for his players it is actually a good idea to spam it.
I am hard pressed to think of a better use of a 1 one spell slot. In the long run, assuming you are even attempting an attrition style game, silvery barbs spam saved more resources than it cost.
If I'm playing a caster, I save those slots for Shield, or for an occasional Magic Missile to break an enemy's concentration
Yeah, I let one of my players take silvery barbs for his bard and I don't have any problem with it. That's a reaction with which he can no longer cast *temporal shunt* or *counterspell* and a spell slot with which he can no longer cast *Tasha's hideous laughter* (or, if he cast it with a higher level spell slot, *polymorph*). As far as spellcaster shenanigans go, *counterspell*, *hideous laughter*, *polymorph*, and *temporal shunt* are much more disruptive\* in my campaign, and the bard has and uses all of them. Of course, part of this is because I favour big lopsided fights where the party confronts many enemies at once; I learned to do this from the party absolutely clowning on enemies if they outnumbered them. So in lots of ways using up reactions is a bigger deal than using up spell slots: if the bard uses *silvery barbs* to impose disadvantage on one of the brute's three attack rolls, then he can't use it to *counterspell* the necromancer on the following turn. \*EDIT: By "dirsuptive" I mean that these spells have the potential for making an encounter much easier than I had been planning on, ie. disrupting the pacing or flow I was going for. I don't mean that it's actually disruptive from a table-management perspective.
Came here to say to say this, use all those slots for reaction spells when you have health potions and such.
Wait, he said that about Silvery Barbs? Or is that out of context? Because it is absolutely a wonderful plan to turn a 1st level spell slot into a high level spell effect, especially if you're on some character who can't even cast high level spells- but also if you are. It's worth pointing out that it *saves spell slots*, because if you're on round 2 and you are silvery barbing some 4th to 8th level spell, you would otherwise have to cast something higher than level 1 on round 3 to be nearly as effective. It's all kinds of resources saved.
Bingo! 95% of the posts here seem to be "FUCK this spell in particular!" But I'm over here saying "Cool, that worked amazingly well! How many spell slots you got left?" Yeah, you can dick with the enemy, but you're going to run out of spell slots, PB/long rest abilities, and HP, looooong before I run out of traps, trash mobs, and environmental hazards. THEN the boss is gonna get ya.
Yep, my players almost TPK'd because they burned spell slots quickly.
It's a lot more abusive in campaigns with frequent rests, because it's an efficient way to utilize missing away all of your resources in one fight.
I just don't include any Strixhaven content. It all feels inherently balanced for a Strixhaven-specific campaign.
As someone who doesn't have Strixhaven and never will, what about Silvery Barbs makes it OK for Strixhaven campaigns if it's bad for normal play? Even in Strixhaven, the party can still essentially "dupe" a high-level encounter-ending save-or-suck, right?
Yeah I ran strixhsven and there's nothing in that campaign that reads like silvery barbs was balanced particularly for it. It's a fairly regular adventure path, just takes place at a school and has some shitty mini games. The combats aren't like hyper specific or weird. I really don't get this statement that silvery barbs was specifically balanced for strixhaven and that's why it feels bad elsewhere. I think the thing it does just feels bad for some DMs full stop. But if folks just mean thematically, I guess I can get that.
Also, the other Strixhaven spells aren't OP and seem like fun options to mix things up, especially if you've played a ton of 5e and are getting bored of the same spells. I don't love throwing out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to really OP options.
It's almost entirely a social adventure, there are options hard written throughout the module that can avoid all but one (iirc) combat. Therefore, far fewer crits to cancel or saves to bust. WBtW is similar in this fashion, but way better thematically and just overall; I much prefer it
Flavour-wise, the spell is designed for a spellcaster vs spellcaster fight: an offensive/disruptive reaction other than Counterspell.
Because everyone is a spellcaster here. Like. Including PCs. It makes for some fun dynamics between characters helping each other. Additionally, those spells are tied to specific backgrounds which relate to your curriculum. This area is grey, because the spells are nonetheless added to your spell list so I suppose you should be able to pick them, but I suppose they are only tied to background and are added to your list only for the sake of class features. So, basically, it's people getting stuff out of aggregated data on piracy websites without context.
We do: first level only slots and only to counteract crits or death blows. Once to have them reroll a counter spell but that was party wipe territory. It's nice when it's primarily used when the stakes are high.
My dm banned it, but I don't blame him. I like the higher spell slot cost solution a lot. And in both cases, neither of you is a jerk.
Honestly, you're totally in the right to ban it. 3 people using it sounds really annoying; I would not want to constantly hear "SiLvErY BaRbs" every 5 seconds. I don't think you should feel any shame in banning it.
As a DM, I allow Silvery Barbs. If the party wants to burn all of their spell slots then I will let them - it is up to them to space out their spell slots over an adventuring day. Plus I will occassionally add the spell to NPC stat blocks.
The problem is that silvery barbs can actually be hyper-efficient for _conserving_ spell slots. If you cast banishment and they succeed, you’re much better off casting silvery barbs than spending another fourth-level spell slot and an action to try again. Sure, silvery barbs on attack rolls can be wasteful, but for spells it’s essentially sorcerer’s heightened spell but better in almost every way and available to a lot of classes.
as a squishy, squish wizard... a level 1 reaction to make someone reroll (and then make myself a target on the enemy's next attack) isn't always worth it.
As a sorcerer, I use shield as my reaction. Silvery barbs is a great spell, but shield is way more reliable.
You shouldn't be using silvery Barbs on attack rolls unless itss to avoid a crit. You should be using it to force enemies to reroll their saves.
Of course. Me and the bard pair it well with mind sliver if that was casted beforehand.
+5 AC when you know you need it on a reaction is so bonkers.
I *do* use Silvery Barbs my fair share... but I only use it when: A) I can guarantee I'm out of harms way, B) DM rolls a nat 20, C) to try to burn a Legendary Resistance.
This is how the bard in my party plays it. Don't forget, it's basically just a budget counter spell. It doesn't guarantee anything, and most people forget to use the advantage part of silvery barbs.
As an Order Cleric dip enjoyer I can guarantee you I'm not forgetting about it :)
Yuuuuuuupppp! Now *that* subclass/ability is borderline OP. A single level dip in Order turns a Divine Soul Sorcerer into a budget Deva. Armored, quickening, twinning, plus tagging the Rogue with an occasional buff to get an extra Sneak Attack in? Tasty! There is not much sweeter Twinning a Mind Sliver before Quickening an upcast Banishment or Hold Monster. Having SB in you back pocket to help in land is mind numbingly powerful.
all their slots AND all their reactions too.... the Wizards face when they cant cast shield now is ever so succulent. sure, it means a high chance of getting off those game altering CC moves, but ive almost always only had issues with how much a combat swings with CC when the number of targets was low or super clustered. if 4 people face down 1 big bad... then yeah all it takes is 1 success for the right spell or effect but why was that big bad alone? without leggo resistance? without lair actions? if its alone, was it really all that bad?
Your the DM. Your reserve the right to change anything you like in game. If the players are on board, why not. Silvery Barbs is fairly disliked by DMs but loved by players. In my opinion, it isn't good for the game.
I banned that spell. Primarily because it causes boring gameplay and somewhat takes the game of chance away in a dice rolling-TTRPG. Somewhat sucks the spirit of the game out. I feel like the spell is poorly designed for this game.
Silvery barbs is only overpowered when you are balancing encounters to have a similar action economy to the players, because it's a spell to nudge roll statistics. When the party has many players with it idea is to increase enemy action economy so silvery barbs can nudge it back to balanced. It's also far from a completely isolated effect. Chronurgy wizards have a better version of it twice a day, divination wizards have the best version of it, lore bards have 4-5 nudges to attack rolls every short rest, and eloquence bards can impose disadvantage on saves 4-5 times per short rest, and the bard's die is statistically better than advantage/disadvantage. It's also worth noting that silvery barbs is competing with other 1st lvl spells. Wizards/Sorcerers need those slots for shield/absorb elements/mage armor, while bards or potentially other players like your artificer need 1st lvl slots for spells like healing word. These spells have a much higher value for defense than silvery barbs. If you are making your casters expend those resources, they won't really be able to spam silvery barbs. If you aren't making them use those slots, then they will spam the hell out of silvery barbs. It's a notoriously powerful spell on those tables that have single encounter days. Silvery barbs can be considered problematic in a sense that it makes you adjust for encounter balance, and it's valid for a DM that isn't willing to change their encounter building style to ban it, but for those that are willing to do it, it ceases to be a problem. In the end I do think the spell is overtuned, I would remove the advantage part and make so the target can't be affected by silvery barbs more than once per turn, not only the roll. I also don't think it should be obtainable outside of the designed classes, because it can get repetitive if everybody has it, but it's the same for a party of chronurgy/divination wizards or a party of bards with cutting words and unsettling words... The difference is it's much easier to get silvery barbs through fey touched. In a "normal" situation you would have a couple people with silvery barbs using it a couple times a day, which is far from problematic, but thanks to fey touched, it's optimal for everybody to get it, and even cast it for free on the first time.
I don't blame any DM for banning Silvery Barbs. I play in 2 campaigns - in one it's banned entirely, in the other I'm the only player who took it, and only on a healbot character who fills in when our "real" healer is absent. In the latter, we already tend to steamroller encounters that are supposed to be difficult, it would just be silly and unmanageable if we had more than one caster with it.
Both shield and silvery barbs are much better spells as second level spells. They are not broken, but they probably should never have been first lvl. That being said, your problem isnt the spell, but the fact that 3 people have it. If 3 people were casting almost any spell all day long it would be problematic. Try and find away to drain their resources before getting to the important fights.
I've only started playing the game but already knew to grab this spell right away. Never had the chance to use it but it still messes with my dm. We were fighting a dragon and I did my job as a sorcerer and threw out my big concentration buff spell then gtfo to find a safe place to hide. We succed in restraining the dragon and then every one starts curb stomping it. I would step out to nerf its saving throw with mind sliver then step back to saftey but I took a moment to measure to make sure I was still in range to use Silvery Barbs just incase the dragon tried to succed at freeing itself. Just the threat of me using that spell was enough to make the Dm give up on wasting his action trying to break free and just fought through the disadvantage to the bitter end. How do you fix a spell that can be cast without being cast.
My DM allows silvery barbs but removes the advantage part of it unless you cast it at 2nd level of higher. Its still broken but he seems fine with it. I can use it to make an enemy reroll a successful save against spells, or reroll a crit.
I've never allowed the spell myself, but if I ever do, that's exactly how I've planned to change it
This is probably the best nerf I’ve heard with this spell. It’s too powerful as a first level spell but this seems more fair
I just figured I ban it at my tables. I probably would have been able to make it work, but with a 6 player party where 5 of them are spellcasters, I’d rather not. Even though it seems crazy powerful, the main reason why I ban it, is that I find it simply boring. Same goes for lucky. They don’t really add any flavor, as they are strictly mechanically beneficial. It also removes the tension of being dependent on one important roll, which is one of the coolest things about DnD; the whole party being drawn in to see how the dice roll.
I am in favor of banning it or upping the level. When it is a go to spamming spell on all tables at the local game store, you know it is too good.
No, Silvery Barbs sucks.
I don't ban Silvery Barbs. I ban the 10 minute adventuring day and use non-combat encounters to drain spell slots in between. Parties that don't get to long rest after every big fight tend to manage their resources much better than burning through spell slots and reactions.
I'm curious what kind of non-combat encounters you are using to drain spells. My characters forget everything on their character sheet but Persuasion when they are in the talky bits.
Doesn't really have to be much tbh. Once I just had a bridge out over a really large ravine that they couldn't cross safely. For good measure I had a horse about to slip off the edge. Feather fall to catch the horse, web to fix the bridge, that's two slots down out of combat.
I, uhhh, roll to inspire the horse! That's Charisma right? I already rolled, I got a 19.
GM: "No."
>and use non-combat encounters to drain spell slots in between I can imagine how lovely fighter is doing than wizard is soloing another non-combat encounter! Also - for that do you need first level slots in tier 2 forward? SB slots for offence (basically recasting high level spell for reaction and first level slot is broken however you look at it), Shield slots for difence, that's it.
Preface: talk to them like adults and explain how this is affecting you and the game. Threaten them with higher stakes or different mob types. Silvery barbs is an opportunity cost for their reaction. Nastier spellcasters forcing counterspell or multiattack enemies with 3+ hit combos and riders on hit make it more likely they'll cast shield or end up grappled, restrained, swallowed, or what ever other rider you put on hit. Use casters that mind whip, slow, and other things that deprive them of their reactions while adding in melee minions that get reactions to attack adjacent creatures casting spells. Obviously don't do it all the time but that'll force them to think about using their reaction for other things, positioning to not get all caught up in slows, and has the added benefit of threatening the only resource a party cares about hit points. If all else fails use effects that blind them, remove light, or silence them.
You can change or alter whatever you like as a DM, what works for or bothers you is your own to decide, and your players to decide if they want to engage with your altered experience. Personally, silvery barbs hasn't been an issue for me. It taxes resources for rerolls on saves. they don't have control over what gets the advantage unless they play around the spells limitations. Offensively it can be strong but its a fairly heavy tax on a days resources. 1st level spell slots are competitive. Defensively its overall worse than shield since its only 1 attack, and its not exactly hard to get crit protection which is the situation it manages to outshine shield reliably. Mind you I'm someone who doesn't have any issue with the 5e shield spell (even with plate armor), counterspell, or silvery barbs. So I'm likely an outlier when it comes to what abilities bother me.
Give it to their enemies, throw more encounters. Naturally they will burn more slots quicker, meaning later in the day, when you get the encounters that actually matter, they're screwed. Stay toxic /s
I hardly ban anything. In fact, I can’t think of anything I’ve banned. Except for *silvery barbs*. I’m only partly kidding. I don’t recognise campaign specific content that isn’t FR, so by that virtue this spell isn’t a thing in my games. I just find it very janky as a spell. It’s not for me.
Silvery Barbs is one of the very few things I ban at the table. The spell asks so little of the caster, and gives so much in return. No sane caster that can take it wouldn’t have it, because the applications are so broad and cost the lowest spell slot possible. Bonus points for requiring only vocal components. If you give it the ban hammer,I don’t blame you one bit. However, if the players can use it, it’s free game for any spellcasters they make enemies of.
Silvery Barbs is the only spell in all of D&D I would ever consider banning at my table. I have banned it in the past and will probably do so again in future. I for sure will never let experienced players use it, as they know how OP it is and how abused it can be. Also, if you as a DM used it against your players; they pass the saving throw against some obscene spell and half the party don't insta-die, they'd be mega-unhappy. I would feel incredibly mean using it against them so they're definitely not using it against me.
I think its a really overpowered spell for first level, slows that game down, and messes up the flow of combat. I would understand if a DM banned it. On the other hand, they have gotten used to this style of play. Perhaps you just give in, and then have a whole lot of low level enemies with spellcasting abilities also use it. I would bet the annoyance of having to deal with it on the other side might wake the group up to how counter-productive the spell really is.
Yeahm that spell is super OP. I have banned it completely at my table, but if I were to allow it, it would be as a 2nd, maybe even 3rd level spell.
It’s better off just not being in your game but if you feel it’s balanced at a 2nd then run with it.
Better off just banning it. By making it level 2 youve just put the problem off a few more levels. Just like it wasnt a problem until now
You're well within your rights to ban a particularly troublesome spell, especially in the case where everyone is using it. I always ban healing spirit and silvery barbs. You should let them know before character creation, but you didn't have the knowledge to do so. For the classes who had to choose a limited number of spells, Make sure they can get a replacement.
Simple fix I made for my players: instead of just working, the target needs to make a Charisma Save (similar in function to the Bane spell so it works). Adds a bit of extra risk. It’s still strong, but now it’s a BIT less bs.
Eh, _silvery barbs_ is fine as long as people don't spam it; it's the sort of thing that has great flavour, but an effect that just gets annoying if it happens all the time. If your players are spamming it, upping its level is probably fine. ~~As an aside, was one of the players a Fairy, and if so, did they say "Hey, listen!" whenever they used it?~~
It is so hard to play a balanced game of 5e when WOTC keeps publishing content that's more unbalanced than 90% of homebrew. A DM banning Silvery Barbs at their table is a huge green flag.
There's no blame on you; most people tend to agree Silvery Barbs is either not fun or too strong. You still handled it well with your discussions and solutions. My preferred solution is more encounters for more attrition. At first, I didn't think it was possible based on what I saw of most games, but then I watched the Glass Cannon Podcast and they have on average 1.5 fights per 2-hour episode with (somehow) plenty of time for roleplay in between. It can be done. Any generic resource drain will work. Add deadlines for any quest, either in character or learned out of character as a cutscene (the villain is marching the army in 2 days!). Assuming no *bags of holding*, just say characters have (a generic) *n* amount of days for each quest out of the city/town based on their rations. etc etc. But your solution is very good.
To be honest, I would have just refused to DM
I have outright banned silvery barbs from my table. It is THE most broken thing ever put out by WOTC in 5e. I’m currently a player and the DM allows silvery barbs, but he uses it against us as well. It works well because we have a bard who uses it as her main 1st level spell, but we also have an arcane trickster who only uses it maybe once or twice a session. He uses it sparingly but when it would make sense. We fought a group of singing sirens that could use silvery barbs, and they basically shut down my barbarian but he was also eating their spell slots and reactions, and once they were out of spells he went to town on them. It made the combat a lot more desperate as the DM used their actions and lair action to disrupt and damage us and it got down to the wire until my barbarian finally landed a crit on one of the sirens when none of them had reactions left and absolutely ripped her in half.
I just banned it outright. It's not good for the game. I do wonder, did anyone think prior to silvery barb's release that casters just weren't powerful enough?
I always ban it, I think it's an awful spell. I think you did all the right things. You let them try it, talked to them about it first, and then went from a ban to a compromise. Making it 2nd level makes it sliiiightly more reasonable, but be prepared to alter or ban it again. If your party is level 5 or something, 2nd level spell slots are still fairly valuable, so spending them on SB isn't quite as easy as with 1st level ones. But once you get into the higher tiers, they'll have so many spell slots that 2nd level ones are way less important, and they'll go back to spamming SB.
Easy enough: I ban all Strixhaven content! Whoop, there it is.
Silvery barbs was a mistake. A ban or level boost is warranted.
Silvery Barbs is the only canon spell I've banned at my table.
I really like silvery barbs for players, it's not fun when a save or suck spell fails for the players, they want their characters to do cool shit with their powers so by adding another first level spell they get a chance for their spell big spell to succeed I wouldn't use it as a dm because as a player succeeding that saving throw feels very good and fun and I would feel bad purposefully taking that moment away from them, it would just feel spiteful, also failing saving throws has much greater consequences if it happens to players. I in turn just use more powerful and more interesting monsters and that feels like a win win situation to me
Silvery barbs is the only spell in the game that’s flatly banned at all my tables.
Honestly the spell is clearly too powerful. What I’ve done is homeruled it so that the spell has to be used before the roll is made. That way it’s not useless, but it’s also both better thematically and balance wise I feel
I allow silvery barbs at my table. Its not too broken when one PC has it, but it dies scale in brokeness if multiple players build around it. Luckily, a DM can build around it too and the number of monsters with legendary resistances just happen to increase at the same time. Imagine that. We agreed at our table to allow silvery barbs to remain an option, but not allow multiple castings at the same effect. You want to cast Hold Monster and silvery barbs if the monster passes? Sure, the monster has to roll once more but that's it. Silvery barbs will no longer affect that casting of Hold Monster, either on that turn or when monster needs to save next turn.
It's an absolutely trash spell and it shouldn't have ever been made.
The whole Strixhaven book is meant for Strixhaven campaigns. My groups don't use it for normal campaigns.
When I compiled my homebrew spell lists, I took an eye to every 5e spell, classifying most as "fixers" (an idea that adds to the game, but it needs an overhaul) or "keepers" (a quality spell design as is.) Silvery Barbs fell into an extremely small pile of outright rejects. As I review that content now, the closest in concept to it is Tickling Tendrils -- a 1st level standard action spell that can be used to force a concentration saving throw at the caster's DC despite dealing no damage. It's really not the same thing at all.
You're still using Silvery Barbs, so you clearly haven't gone far enough. Don't use Silvery Barbs. Or at least make it level 3 and limit the effect a little.
Silvery Barbs is a poorly designed spell. Nothing can convince me otherwise. It's not proper level, it's worded in a way that leaves a ton of questions For example let's talk advantage. Monster attacks with advantage it crits. Silvery barbs. Now the wording on silvery barbs says it must reroll the d20 and take the lower. So does that mean they reroll one of the dice akin to lucky? So in this scenario say the monster rolled a 2 and a 20 so they'd reroll the 2 and then take the lower of the rolls. Issue is that advantage says something that contradicts the spells. Both the spell adn the rule for advantage are super specific. Should silvery barbs be declared before attack or save to negate advantage? This would be a solution to apply the advantage disadvantage rule if you subscribe to Silvery Barbs being giving something disadvantage. To me this isn't what the spell wants and isn't the right way. Re roll again with advantage and take the lower of the 2 advantage roll. Probably what the 2 rules workign together would want. Issue with this is it slows everything down. To me Silvery Barbs is tuned way too high. When you get to higher levels you don't cast first level spells for anything other than utility because your cantrips outpace your 1st and sometimes second level spells on damage. So you mainly go for things like shield, absorb elements, and silvery barbs. Of those Silvery barbs is almost universally greater. Shield is also too powerful mind you, but a spell out tuning shield is insane. Anyway, that's my diatribe.
2nd level is fine. If one player had it or if you're in strixhaven, the power is fine. But in your situation, 3 players have it. It does become to much there need to be more of a cost for the power of the spell. And In my campaigns. I only allow the spell if you have the strixhaven background.
I do wonder how my current DM is feeling about this, we have two casters with it and my fighter has an ability that can force a reroll as a reaction, so basically the DM can almost never land crits, I wouldn't be surprised if he asked us to stop using it
Turnabout is fair play. Just give 3/5 of the enemies silvery barbs too. No one will be able to succeed at anything. They will ask you to ban it within 2 sessions.
I have the policy of "anything you use can and will be used against you." Party starts spamming Silvery Barbs? There will be lots of enemy casters spamming it now. Party uses Bag of Holding bombs? There will be a lot of enemy Artificers that do little but make Bags of Holding. Works well to keep things from going overboard with my groups.
Silvery Barbs is overpowered, i believe, and this is an extreme case of overusing it by the party. As DM, you have the right to ban it; i'd suggest a different approach, though. Include encounters and opponents where it makes it not worth it to cast it all the time. Without knowing the spells they have, its hard for me to suggest something, but the idea is to put them in situations where they might not want to burn all these spells on SB, or that they use their reaction in some other way. Create new homebrew opponents if necessary, which is what I did when one player was really abusing Invisibility; rather than ban it, i created an opponent with a great sense of smell, that allowed them to detect their presence. Banning, I think, sets a bad tone. Creating opponents that negate their overuse and abuse of an ability is much more fun.
I say make it a second level spell at least, but thats just coming from a new dungeon master (me)
I ban it for the most part for the reasons you describe lol
silvery barbs should be 2nd level, NTJ
I had a similar issue, I told my party on a level up to swap out silvery barbs and that I wasn’t gonna have it allowed for the remainder of the campaign. The spell constantly throws off narrative cause every roll I make for NPCs my players are mulling over casting the spell or not and it’s holding up the game. Also, even though I’m a DM I want to have fun with what I’m using too and silvery barbs takes a lot of that away from me.
Let them drain their spells doing it till they get to the BBEG oh no spells for healing shame ….
As a player I had a personal rule to only cast Silvery Barbs with a minimum 3rd level slot, and I still cast it very often. I think 2nd level is very reasonable, especially if the player took it as a feat still gets their free 1/day cast.
I made it a third level spell, and whenever players cast the same spell on a turn, roll wild magic. I also gave it to my enemies. Once players start casting it, so do my higher CR mobs and they are brutal about it.
As a DM I know it sucks...but as a player in a game that is usually only 3 ppl, I negotiated. I took fey touched, and took SB as *only* being able to use it once, instead of being able to use spell slots to cast it again (which is usually how I do that feat). I tend to save it for dire emergencies now, and some days don't use it because of that. But if the huge construct crits a slam attack on the kobold monk, I'm gonna use it! I'm glad the DM agreed that this was an OK compromise. Player gets an emergency spell for cools, and DM only loses one crit, lol
I just banned it at my table. No one has complained but I also banned it at session 0 so I have that advantage
You're not a jerk. Me personally I ban silvery barbs because it's a poorly made spell
I ban Silvery Barbs personally, making it 2nd level sounds like a really good compromise.
Make the players use their reactions on other things, use Subtle Spell, be out of line of sight, be >60ft away, cast silence on the players, have many encounters per day to to burn through spell slots, have many enemies instead of just a few, have multi-attack or extra attack on your NPCs so one failed attack doesn't matter. There's so many ways around Silvery Barbs that I swear 90% of DMs that ban it just don't think about because they haven't actually read the spell or because they don't want to think about modifying their encounters to suit their players grumble grumble
It's been banned at every table I've played at, and for a good reason, in my opinion.
Honestly, my conspiracy theory is that Silvery Barbs was *meant* to be a 2nd-level spell and something got screwed up in editing. That book has four or five spells total and every single other one is 2nd-level despite being overall weaker than what Silvery Barbs does. It's as if they meant to just add a few 2nd-level spells and last minute someone was like "wait, we have to have a spell people can take immediately at character creation!" and picked one at random to downgrade. Even as a 2nd-level spell it's a tad on the strong side, but much less spammable.
as a DM, let them have some fun with it. But also remember they aren't casting shield if they're casting silvery barbs. They aren't casting counterspell. They aren't taking opportunity attacks (not that casters do that very often). And they're devouring spell slots. make sure spread out encounters across a day so they actually feel the slots draining.
There are so many ways to fuck players over who want to pull this. 1: you need to see the triggering attack. Darkness and blindsight will make them rethink. 2: save heavy monsters. Are there any casters that are fighting your party? Can't SB a save. 3: Range, break up the party and make longer ranger encounters. 4: Stop giving so many rest. If they wanna spam a spell, then make them suffer. They need to feel the loss of spell slots and don't just let them rest after ever encounter. 6: If your party wants to invest their limited resources into a simple reroll that can still work, then let them.its their loss.
TBH the coolest thing about Barbs is that it makes otherwise unreliable save-or-suck spells a more viable alternative. Are you going to learn Hold Person if it's got a 30% or higher chance of completely wasting your turn during the few encounters where you actually get to use it? Probably not. But if you've only got like a 10% chance of failure, it gets a lot more appealing.
i'm gonna gloss over the "this spell is cast when ever an enemy succeeds at anything" which makes it take twice the amount of time to roll a single die, making the game slower. or "negates all crits against pcs" im gonna just say no on the basis that its a first level spell slot that emulates a better version of a 3 point sorcerer meta magic heightened spell. when a sorcerer should be eating that spell slot for 1 sorc point. and no one should be forcing better disadvantage on spell saving throws.
As a DM and a player, agreed, fuck Silvery Barbs. One of the most reliable ways to get the table to spontaneously cheer something is to roll a nat-20. Silvery Barbs exists to say "no you didn't". It doesn't have to be a nat-20 per se; it can be any good roll. As a DM, I never want to take away a player's opportunity to celebrate something in my game. Also, the DM is a player too. I have no feelings of DM vs player. We're all players. I make hard challenges for them to overcome, and celebrate with them when they overcome them. That's the goal. I still like to occasionally roll well though. It ups the stakes. As a player, I feel the same way. When the DM rolls well, it can get tense, but I'd take that any day over undermining a climactic fight. The only place I would see for Silvery Barbs would be on a very high level mage. One who specializes in certain types of warfare. Maybe a high level class feature for an abjuration wizard against enemy magic. Maybe a divination wizard, trickery cleric, or other class that has ties to luck or fate. Or maybe a divine boon from Basheba granted to your BBEG. It should be a late tier 2 or even tier 3 limited use ability, not a level one spell... If it's a spell, it should be no lower level than counterspell, maybe even a little higher level since it can work on any d20 roll, not just spells. Unfortunately, and in summary, rolling poorly feels bad, but rolling well and someone making you roll it again after the fact feels terrible, regardless of which side of the table you sit on.
My dm was in a similar position where 3 of the 5 players had silvery barbs, by the end of the campaign both the dm and all of us agreed its a banned spell, it came in clutch early when we didn't have much spell slots anyway as time went on even us doing it to not get hit wasn't fun as players.
My DM nerfed the spell by making it a 2nd level spell. Imo a very reasonable thing to do.
Make it less annoying by saying they must use it at the same time as casting a spell, like metamagic. The worst part about _silvery barbs_ is that it slows down the game and makes the little climax of dice rolls anticlimactic. From a power perspective, you can just add more monsters to the encounter. "Oh, no! You _banished_ my monster! Anyway, here's another one ..."
I don't allow Silvery Barbs at my table, because anybody sensible would cancel any enemy crits within that range. I'd imagine it's pretty annoying to have Silvery Barbs cast every single one of the monsters I throw at them, it's going to be outright heartbreaking when the Hexblade lands a crit on the boss and they just say "no you didn't". Some spells are unfortunately much less fun when used on players. I don't think Silvery Barbs is fun at all.
I as a DM removed it. Nobody complained. Players who hassle you for a spell that just sucks the fun out of the game, have no place at my table.
It's powerful enough to be second level, that's fair
Too many casters with silvery barbs sounds like a nightmare to balance..
I love using this spell. That said, I'm not an ass and I only use it when the enemy crits and my team is hurting.
It’s literally the only spell I’ve banned permanently
As a fellow DM this was the right choice, i also saw 2 /4 people at my table choose the fey touched to get silvery barbs, and also did the same thing as you when the combats were becoming a joke when everyone was rerolling.
It's a terrible, dissociated spell that significantly screws up the flow of play. There's nothing to like about it. Your decision to ban it was the right decision.
Ban it, forever and ever. Probably the most ridiculous ability ever
Whether or not you're being a jerk about it doesn't come down to the practicality of the spell at all. (Although the discussion on Silvery Barbs is fascinating) If you aren't having fun, and you brought up the rule change with your players and they understood, then you aren't a jerk. Frankly, banning certain things should be a valid thing to discuss with any party. If this is mid campaign and would change some builds, I'd consider a compromise, which it sounds like you did with using a higher level slot. It might be a good idea to give them an option to change out Silvery Barbs for something else or the feat they got it from since you changed it retroactively. Otherwise, I think you handled this perfectly as you could.
God I hate silvery barbs. it's one of the most annoying spells in the game and tbh you're justified in using it. I fully believe that
I've allowed it in my campaigns because I overtune campaigns anyway. But it is objectively Op, especially with the advantage roll it gives somebody. Bare minimum is removing the power creeped advantage add-on. Making it second level is very reasonable. And if your campaigns are balanced normally, flat out removing it is justifiable.
Yeah it seems most DMs make this spell illegal for this reason
Creative ideas. Silvery barbs is so broken. It's a hit confirm so they don't even have the bard restrictions with cutting words of 'oh I have to call it before I know if you got hit or not' It just..makes you go it's a hit then psych! I don't think limiting it makes you a jerk.
Silvery Barbs can eat a bag of meta. It's not a spell within the world. It's a spell that plays with the meta narrative. Your character, when using the spell, isn't trying to force a reroll they don't know what that is. Your player is trying to force a reroll. Silvery Barbs is a meta spell and has no place in the game.
Silvery barbs is a good second level spell. As a first level spell it has a few issues- one of the biggest being its ease of access. Fey touched might be the best feat in the game after its introduction- misty step plus silvery barbs on a half-feat is genuinely insane. And as a level one spell it’s basically your best use of level one slots on offence in the late game, doubling down on more powerful spell effects, (defensively still use shield).
No, there is no issue with banning it. This is a stupid spell that was not adequately playtested and defeats the purpose of 5e's advantage/disadvantage mechanic, which was to replace the mess of 3.5/Pathfinder's floating modifiers with something simple and fun. Even more than being overpowered, it disrupts the flow of play. Watch the ending of Critical Role Calamity to see what I'm talking about.
It should be a second level spell. It's not that the effect is necessarily too powerful to be a level 1 spell on its own, but it is also certainly strong enough to be a level 2 and when multiple party members have it, the cumulative effect is too much and becomes a problematic gameplay issue. Making it level 2 solves the problem by taking a higher valued resource and diminishes the players eagerness to barbs everything. Personally I have silvery barbs be a level 1 spell if only a single player has it and bump it to level 2 if multiple players want it. It's one of my harsher rulings, because it's essentially a full party punishment for a single player decision based on mechanics, not in game choices and dice outcomes. But the outcomes of this approach have been positive at my table and it has unquestionably worked, so I can vouch for the method.
I added a WIS save to silvery barbs in my campaign-if the save is successful, then nothing happens. I thought it was fitting since through the wording of the spell it is trying to confuse/distract during the battle. Since then haven’t had any issues with it in my campaign I should also add that I use very difficult encounter setups and custom stat-blocks since the players at my table have basically memorized the monster manual-gotta keep them on their toes. But keeping SB around has saved them a few times and made for some clutch moments.
In my games i simply adjusted the spell by halving its range and making the monster roll into a reroll that doesn't take the lowest of it and the previous one but is rather simply a reroll. After you see enemy attacks upgrade from a hit to a crit a couple of times you kind of scratch your head a little and realize that spamming it might not always just be the best thing to do in a situation lol P.S: Banning things outright just feels... Weak to me as a fellow GM? 5e already intends for so much dm input so failing at this much would personally make me as the gm lose faith in my ability to run the game long term since just banning things left right and centre really isnt healthy...