Matt: Welcome to Dicegeeks Draft Day. I am Matt. I’m joined by Jake and Nudge. We’re going to have a roll-off to see who goes first. Let’s roll. Oh, geez.
Jake: I got a 15.
Nudge: 17.
Matt: I got a four. So yeah, let’s go. All right, Nudge, take us away.
Nudge: if I’m going first, I’ll probably just going to steal Jake’s as quickly as I can here and go with Silvery Barbs. Although it’s probably on both of your lists. Now that I think about it,
Matt: Let me scratch it off.
Nudge: I choose it even though I personally have almost never used it because I almost never played a character that has it available, but I choose it because it has saved my bacon so many times other people casting it that I just it’s like got so much clear utility. Don’t use reactions all that often in combat. Opportunity attacks don’t happen as often as you’d like them to, and so getting to use a pretty powerful spell with a reaction is great for action economy. And it’s just a really good. Nerfs the bad guys. You only have to use it when it counts. And then it buffs the good guys.
Nudge: There’s just, it’s just like awesome.
Matt: Absolutely. All right, Jake, what do you got?
Jake: I mean, that was my number two round. I’ve got Counterspell. It’s my first round. The versatility is almost more than Barbs is great for melee and ranged attacks and Counterspell is a way to shut down your enemy spellcasters. Great is it scales with spell slots, so it doesn’t just cancel, You can use an eighth level to counterspell and now anything under eighth level can’t get cast. but what I think it was like it’s offset is it can be countered as well, so you could have theoretically an endless chain of counter spells going on, I think is awesome. yeah, so that’s my first round pick.
Matt: My first round pick, I’m going with an old one. It is Magic Missile. that is because I do like playing wizards or magic characters a lot. And it is nice just having an auto hit for characters that start off. So weak usually as wizards and some other spellcasters do. Just having that auto hit there, a little bit of damage, you know, your spellcaster is going to be able to do something.
Matt: And of course, my love for this comes from way back. Although when I played as a kid they always made me roll to hit, even though it was an automatic hit back then too. So they lied to me and my wizard had a one. One HP. And he was always dead and he always missed with Magic Missile and he was always dead.
Matt: So the auto hit, I love that. I think it’s awesome. And it adds a little bit to casters.
Nudge: Yeah. I wonder if anybody’s crunched the numbers to look at if you take, another first level spell, say Ice Knife, but you have to calculate whether you hit or not. What’s the statistical probability that of damage you get from that on average versus Magic Missile. Cause it’s probably not magic missile probably isn’t even that lower.
Nudge: And like you said, you just get to hit
Matt: All right. Nudge. We’re on to round two.
Nudge: round two. I’m going to go with Animate Dead. Which I know is maybe a hot take. And it’s really like very, it’s like animate that asterisk, depending on the campaign and how cool you are, GM and slash world is with you. Grave robbing. If it’s pretty grave robbing friendly, then, the amazing thing about animate that is that you can use it to keep control over creatures you have.
Nudge: And so theoretically you could just keep, resurrecting new bad, new corpses every day and then maintaining control. You keep them in reserve for a while. Don’t let them get into the fights. Wait until you get about five or so. Then once you have five, you just overwhelm the enemies with a bunch of little attacks.
Nudge: And then you just keep raising your undead army. And it’s a low-level spell, relatively third level. But you can get a lot of mileage with a hundred zombies.
Matt: What D&D campaign is not good with grave robbing?
Jake: It’s what setting is good with grain robbing. I think every party grave robs eventually, but, if you’re not accumulating war crimes. You’re not playing D&D.
Matt: That’s right. That was a good choice. A good choice. All right, Jake, what do you got?
Jake: My second round is also a necromancy school,
Matt: of course.
Jake: Wither and Bloom, I love this spell it was added in Strixhaven it’s an AoE that does decent damage, it allows you to pick a single target inside of the AoE to spend a hit die, and regain health, And the damage isn’t bad, but it’s not great, but it’s that area of effect of like, Hey, everybody’s now got to make a constitution saving throw, or they’re going to take 2d6 at level 2 and then every level they, you get to add another d6, but I used it several times last night in our fight. Against that Narzagan and I don’t want to, say how awesome I am, but I’m pretty sure that’s the only reason we survived just being able to damage everybody and then heal one of you too.
Nudge: It’s a rare AoE damage spell that allows you to not hit everybody that’s in the area,
Jake: Yes. Yes.
Nudge: hostile enemies, which is
Jake: Yes. Yes. Being, being selective is nice
Matt: And I think my character who died last night helped out in the fight as well. Jake.
Jake: Because I healed him.
Matt: So wither and bloom for Jake and then me, I am going to go with Speak with Dead. I always like this one. I actually like this one, whether I’m playing or whether I am the dungeon master It’s just hey, let’s, let’s talk to the dead guy or open up the coffin and we can talk to the person in the coffin.
Matt: And then as a dungeon master, I really liked the idea of role-playing somebody who is dead, right? That sounds a little weird, but I love the idea of being able to speak for that person and give some kind of cryptic clues or something like that. I really liked that one. Although back in the day, of course, they have fixed the loophole, back in the day, the dead person couldn’t lie.
Matt: So what we would do is we would just kill every NPC and then Speak with Dead and see if they were telling the truth or not.
Nudge: I wonder if that’s why they fixed the loophole.
Matt: would imagine that is why they fixed that, because yes, you just kill anybody and then ask them and then they couldn’t lie to you.
Jake: You can get consent to then animate them.
Nudge: That’s true. It
Matt: thought of that one.
Nudge: that we all chose necromancy spells for our second
Matt: Yeah, that is, let me cross that one off. All right. Third round.
Nudge: Third round, I’m gonna go with Haste. Haste is now in raw 5e. It’s not as strong as say Baldur’s Gate 3 They definitely changed it and made it a lot stronger. There’s gate 3, but even in 5e especially I mean it’s also an asterisk one because it’s contingent on there being you know, melee people in the party typically but if you have one or two melee One of my favorite things to do is play a sorcerer, get the twinned metamagic and twin haste, two melee characters, and then just disappear for a while and let them hash it out because you increase their AC, you give them an extra attack per round, and they get extra movement speed.
Nudge: You just supercharge a couple of a couple of baddies and then you can just pour yourself a cocktail and watch the carnage ensue.
Matt: Haste is awesome. Because a wizard or somebody who is weak can stay back and then just supercharge the tank. That is really cool.
Jake: you can also haste your enemies and then drop concentration immediately and stun them for a round which is a loophole that I’m sure they’re going to be plugging soon. Yeah.
Matt: the new edition, Will. I’m sure.
Nudge: that’s interesting.
Matt: That one is cool. I haven’t started. All right. Third round, Jake.
Jake: my third round is Heat Metal.
Jake: It comes online pretty quick. It deals damage every turn. If you target armor or maybe they’ve got a brain plate that you can see, whatever. the damage scales fairly well. The only con is they can if you do it with their sword, they just drop their sword.
Jake: Now that’s great because you can then just go they can’t pick up their sword now. So now they’re only punching me instead of hitting me with their really cool sword. But what’s great is you don’t have to touch it. You can just cast and then run away, and then as they chase you, they’re burning themselves alive, which is a really cool thing.
Matt: Yes. As I was thinking of this list, I was thinking of my favorite spells for D&D; D. I was like, we could also do another one. The spells I hate most as the dungeon master and heat metal would be like right on top of that one
Jake: as a dungeon master, you just cast it on your players.
Matt: Yeah
Jake: You know? And it’s like, yeah, you did this to me last encounter. This guy’s ready.
Matt: Although I have to say Jake I had never thought of heating someone. He’s somebody’s brain plate but that would be really cool. My third round pick is Find Familiar because it gives you a familiar. I know that’s pretty simple, but, just talk about the utility of a familiar and the role-play opportunity of a familiar, right?
Matt: That, you can have, a hawk survey the battlefield or up ahead or a cat or a rat that could explore something in an urban environment. I just love that one. And then of course you can give yourself advantage every attack, through the help action. , not only is it flavorful, but it also has some utility.
Jake: Yeah, and one of our campaigns, we had a guy that used his familiar to scout out ahead, and it would probe for traps, you know, and, and so it’s like, Alright, we gotta let Greg resummon his familiar again.
Nudge: And you can But there’s a lot of utility there too. Well, I mean, we were doing a dungeon crawl
Jake: Mm hmm.
Nudge: so there were lots of traps. That was very helpful. If you that with some other things, like aid, if you cast Aid, which increases the max HP for everybody in the party, you can, it counts for Familiars too, so you can increase a Familiar’s 1 HP to like, 15, 16, get a, so it won’t just get hit with one shot and die, and then you’ve got, something even stronger.
Matt: Yeah. And also there’s a loophole with that one too, when, you can cast Dragon Breath on your familiar. And since it’s not considered an attack, the familiar then on your action can breathe a fire onto the enemy, which I think I used, was that in our, which one was that Jake? Was that Strixjammer?
Jake: I think that was Strixjammer,
Matt: Yeah. That was good. When I played a divination wizard.
Jake: Yeah.
Matt: Yeah. So that is also there. So where are we at now? Is this round,
Jake: Uh, round
Matt: round four? Yeah. Round four to nudge.
Nudge: I’m gonna go with Hunger of Hadar.
Matt: you are.
Nudge: I, why? I barely ever play Warlocks. In fact, I’ve never gotten to use this spell in play yet, but it is on my, bucket list of things to do. But it’s just, it’s like, you cast Magical Darkness, just blind. There’s no saving throw. There’s no, it’s just everybody in that space is blind. And also, by the way, they’re going to take cold and acid damage. So, if you can combo this with another spellcaster who does, like a wall of something, a wall of stone, a wall of ice, whatever. Keep them in there. It’s great. It does a consistent amount of damage, if not a lot, but it’s a decent amount of damage, and it’s darkness, and, everybody gets advantage against them.
Nudge: They’re blind. It’s just phenomenal. So
Jake: The only problem is you only get advantage if you can
Nudge: you could
Jake: still see,
Nudge: Yeah.
Jake: which not a lot of people can. Yeah.
Nudge: get Devil’s Sight as a warlock.
Jake: Yeah.
Nudge: Hunger of Hadar is a warlock spell anyway, so it’s like, just get Devil’s Sight, Hunger of Hadar,
Jake: Yeah.
Nudge: you know what? You don’t need a team. You are the team. Just tell them to wait for a second.
Nudge: Yeah.
Matt: All right, Jake.
Jake: where they are. Just describe the, uh,
Matt: All right, Jake. Round four. What’s your pick?
Jake: Round four. I’m going with Polymorph.
Matt: Oh, let me scratch off some stuff. There we go.
Jake: uh, polymorph is great. It lets you role-play as a druid a little bit for a turn. being able to turn into a beast of a challenge rating equal to or lower than your level is pretty awesome. It’s also so I can cast it on somebody. And then just like haste, I’m now out of the fight, maintaining concentration while a giant ape goes ham on the enemy. what’s also great is you could transform your enemy into a goldfish and then toss them into your bag of holding or your bag of devouring. And you no longer have to worry about them anymore. It’s a great way to, uh, up your, your neighborhood, so to speak.
Matt: Yes. What was it, my character and another party member’s character were turned into T-Rexes, during, an encounter at one point.
Nudge: Was that, was that my Sorcerer?
Jake: oh.
Matt: I think it was.
Nudge: because
Jake: Polymorph.
Matt: Yeah.
Nudge: that’s a,
Jake: Yeah.
Nudge: another phenomenal twin spell.
Matt: Yeah.
Nudge: yeah. In fact, I was thinking, you know, I’ll get to that later. I just had a good idea.
Matt: All right. So my fourth round pick, oh man, I’ve got a lot down here. And I don’t want you guys to pick one. I’m very tempted to go with Fireball, but I’m actually going to go with Mind Sliver, another cantrip, since it requires, An intelligence saving throw, monsters and beasts and creatures don’t tend to have a high intelligence.
Matt: So you have a very good likelihood of them failing, their save on those roles, and then of course it gives a little buff on the backside to somebody who you choose. So as a cantrip, when they introduced this, and just seeing that on, certain, spell casters that just, an extra tool that they can at least do a bit of damage to a beast or something like that, while maybe they’re concentrating on another spell or something like that, they can just sit back and cast a cantrip and do a little bit of damage and then give a buff to, another player.
Matt: So that is mine. You thinking about something, Jake?
Jake: I thought that one doesn’t give a buck to another player. It gives them disadvantage on their next saving throw.
Matt: Is it? I thought there was one where it added a plus to it.
Jake: I thought that’s what that one was.
Matt: Oh.
Nudge: Time to consult the rules.
Matt: look up the rules.
Matt: Maybe.
Nudge: saving throw. Subtract of 1d4 from the next saving throw
Jake: Yes.
Matt: Okay, so I should have known. You’re the rules lord, Jake. I thought it gave a buff to somebody else.
Nudge: That’s still pretty good. I
Matt: it is.
Jake: Yeah.
Nudge: it auto, it’s a cantrip that automatically banes
Jake: Yeah.
Nudge: for one round. Like, that’s great.
Matt: That’s absolutely right.
Jake: No, I think you were getting silvery barbs and Minesliver mixed
Matt: Oh, that could be. Alright, so we’re on to round five of our favorite D& D spells. Nudge, what do you got?
Nudge: This is a tough one because I’m having to leave out a lot of
Matt: I know.
Nudge: here, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna have to go with Misty Step. Now, I thought a lot about taking something higher level like Thunder Step. Thunder Step’s great. You disappear and everybody that was surrounding you takes a bunch of damage.
Nudge: That’s awesome, but it’s an action. What I love about Misty Step is that it’s a bonus action and I can’t think of any time I have ever played D&D that I would not have been benefited by a 30 foot teleport as a bonus action. It’s just, incredibly useful for positioning, all that. It’s not, like, as sexy as some of the other things, but it’s just so helpful in getting, because I find that a lot of times the fights, positioning is everything. And if you have bad positioning, that’s why like our fight last night was such a disaster. We had terrible positioning right from the get-go. We didn’t have a plan and it was like, and we didn’t have good ways to get around that. So we just But I think if you can get out ahead early and get in a formation, like it’s awesome.
Nudge: Misty stuff is super great.
Jake: You should never have a plan while playing D& D. That’s one of the written rules.
Nudge: you make the plan so that you can not follow it
Jake: that’s, yeah. Yeah. My bad. My
Matt: Well, as they say, no DM’s plan survives contact with the players, and no player’s plan survives contact with the DM’s. Alright, Jake, what do you got in round five?
Jake: I’m in the same boat, Nudge. I’m in the same boat. I’m going to pass over Ice Knife cause I love Ice Knife and I’m going to go with Rhymes Binding Ice. Now Rhymes Binding Ice is a second level spell a 30 foot cone. It’s a constitution save. It does 3d8 cold damage, which is pretty good for a second level spell. But the best part is the utility that happens to anybody that fails that saving throw, which is they’re frozen. Their movement is now zero and now they have to spend either an action to be able to move or a teammate has to spend an action to make the move. And it’s just a great spell to use as a player and a DM where you can, all right.
Jake: You’re. make a constitution saving throw or now you’re frozen and I’m setting you up for the big bad evil guy to really do some damage. Or as players, it’s nice to go, Hey, I just hit all the minions. got a turn or two before we have to worry about them again. But it’s a great DP, like a damaging spell and utility spell all in one.
Jake: And I really love that.
Matt: Very cool. My last one here, I have a whole bunch. That I have written down. But I’m going to have to say, just because I was up to shenanigans one time, I’m going to say catapult.
Nudge: It’s on my list too.
Matt: I just had a character one time who was able to cause all kinds of chaos with catapults and just being able to launch items.
Matt: All kinds of random items. Just being able to launch them and it cause damage with it. It is just a ton of fun. It can just wreak havoc with everything, having the small items flying at somebody, or, even bigger ones like beer cakes or something like that.
Matt: It’s just amazing.
Nudge: it is bigger sibling telekinesis there’s nothing quite like cutting off the hand of the big bad’s bodyguard to then telekinesis the hand to slap the big bad in the face with the hand of his dead guard. Like it’s just, there’s just so many ways to make it personal. It’s a great spell.
Matt: Absolutely. Well, I had a few honorable mentions. I was going to mention Eldridge Blast. I was going to mention Fireball and maybe, Find Greater Steed, which I’ve actually never gotten to use. No, did I? No, I don’t think we did. We went that far with my Paladin the one time.
Matt: So we got cut off before I had a Greater Steed, which makes me want to weep.
Jake: I think one of my favorite uses of this spell, Find Greater Steed, was in, Jacob’s campaign, where I played a bard who had Find Greater Steed. And that was great because I’m playing a bard, I think we had a paladin in the group, and I’m playing a round on a pegasus, and he didn’t have access to the spell yet.
Matt: Yeah, that sounds about right. Did you guys have one or two honorable mentions that you didn’t get to mention real fast?
Jake: I’ll let Nudge go first.
Nudge: I was gonna go with, Thaumaturgy, but my thoughts on Thaumaturgy could fill up a whole
Matt: I cast Thaumaturgy.
Nudge: I think my two honorable mentions would be Chaos Bolt. It’s not that good
Matt: Oh yeah.
Nudge: It’s just that it can be, every once in a while, when you roll the damage dice and they match up and it, gets to leap and go to somebody else, like, can be incredible if it hits multiple times because then you just like see all this chaos stuff going and it’s just great flavor and the other one would be layman’s tiny
Matt: Oh yeah.
Nudge: ritual and it’s you’re in a dungeon crawl like we were in the Tomb of Annihilation, I can’t, I don’t know how we would have survived the tomb without layman’s tiny hut. It was so useful.
Jake: My two honorable mentions would have to be Ice Knife. I love Ice Knife. It’s similar to Chaos Bolt is the damage isn’t great, but I love the fact that you’re throwing an exploding shard of ice and you can hit your target and then it explodes and now everybody around them has got to make a deck save. Being able to wipe out the Sturgeon or the Sturgis, whatever they’re called, last night, with one was great, like, I only had to deal with one for the rest of the fight while the rest of you guys were dealing with three or four, so that’s Ice Knife. I just love it thematically. very similar to Chaos Bolt. Not the greatest spell, but it has a place in here. The second honorable mention for me would have to be animate objects. when I had my bard Julio animate the playing cards that those guards were playing with, and then I slaughtered guards with a bunch of playing cards, was a highlight for me.
Jake: I will never forget about kicking open the door. animating their cards and killing them before they could even get up from the table. They were cultist guards for those of you watching at home. , they deserved it.
Matt: They were all bad.
Jake: They’d kidnapped a woman. It was the whole thing. , but yeah, after that, I just really fell in love with the spell and you can do a lot of things with that animating, a bookcase, a couch, throwing 10 coins up into the air and animating them. And then, paying people to go away.
Matt: The craziest used was when Ryan, used it in Curse of Strahd to have, was it 10 Irena dolls all working in the field at the vineyard? And it was like the creepiest thing. And he was just like over here, giggling and laughing. He just thought it would be funny to have animated dolls working in the field at the vineyard.
Nudge: I mean, he wasn’t
Matt: No, it was pretty wild. That is another episode of Dicegeeks draft day in the books. If you would like to buy some books of random tables or join my epic Dicegeeks mailing list, the links are below in the description. Until next time, keep gaming.
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