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In a game where “Disguise Self” exists it’s crazy how many players would innately trust a victim who says they were murdered by the butler when they cast “Speak With Dead”.

I think people also forget spells like Guidance have Verbal and Somatic components. A lot of times my players would want to cast Guidance in situations where randomly casting a spell during an encounter or intense situation might prove problematic/difficult. IE: Trying to lie to or convince a guard/king of something. Ultimately, I don't mind the spell and don't actively ban anything in my games, but reminding players that casting spells aren't automatically stealthy might be a good way to go.

My rule with Guidance is Guidance is an action. So if you're discussing an action you are going to do and want to help, you can precast Guidance on someone. But if you say you're doing something, you can't cast Guidance as a reaction to panic help them get better.

34:10 You put up the spell card for True Resurrection, not Transport via Plants. That said, you can technically use True Resurrection to fast travel if you kill a party member, go somewhere, and then True Resurrect them to the new location. I should find a way to use that at some point

I made Guidance and Resistance reactions, so they fit with the way players want to use them. I made True Strike a bonus action, so it has a reason to exist. All three spells add a d4 to a d20 roll of the appropriate type. Changing True Strike to +1d4 instead of granting advantage was necessary to prevent it from becoming a must-have for every rogue, and requiring a multiclass.

I think they way they handles Speak with Dead in the latest DND movie was hillarious as others ask questions to the caster and the corpse answers them directly wasting a question

I don't outright ban them, but if I ever play with a Shepherd druid I ask them to either take the single summon spells or limit them to the 1 or 2 options for summoning instead of all 8. I had a Shepherd druid who would take even longer every time she wanted to cast Conjure Animals but would always end up just going 8 wolves and every time I asked her to please keep track of their initiative to take the load off of myself, but every time she always pushed the burden of tracking their turns onto me.

The fix we've made to Silvery Barbs in the groups that I play with is to make it reduce a roll by 1d4 and allow another character to add 1d4 to their next roll. That brings it more in line with things like Bless or Bane, it's a good "oh this needs *just* a bit less to miss let's try it", and even when it doesn't succeed you still get that crispy +1d4 to your next roll. It definitely brings it down to a 1st Level spell.

You can have curses that require Remove Curse with a higher level spell slot, rather than just "cannot be removed by remove curse", so it can afflict your characters for a few levels or until they go find a powerful allied high priest.

I love that your suggestions about Remove Curse were basically the same thing I suggested in your Discord while we were waiting for the video to go up 😅.

I think the biggest problem with guidance is that it only lasts for one minute. It makes players see it as a reactionary spell that can only be used for one roll especially in exploration. If it had a longer duration even like 10 minutes I think it would help player cast it before hand like when they enter a new room in a dungeon and they start to search it.

For me and my group, we do talk about certain spells that can cause an issue, so we dont get everyone just casting summon spells with silverybarbs support. But the most important thing is if there are problems with spells, change them to make them fit your group. Playiny in a campaign that is heavy on survival? Make goodberry consume its material component. A horror campaign through the realms of ravenloft? Make identity not reveal the curses on the item and loot you find so the surprise is still there. The most important thing is that this should be communicated and agreed with everyone involved for improving the health of your game.

Ah yes, my favorite transportation spell, True Resurrection. Our table has a small check to Counterspell, where you don't have the Meet it to Beat it feature, the cast always requires the DC roll, upcasting doesn't provide any benefit.

My problem with Silvery Barbs isnt really that it is too powerful. The problem is that it breaks up the game and interrupts emotional responses to rolls. The DM also always has to side eye the Silvery Barbs caster. It just destroys the flow of the game.

Spells I banned or changed: 1. Comprehend Languages (and any other spell or feature that works with languages) - only works on living languages. It's still useful, but doesn't raise questions like "why is this ancient, dead language of a civilization that disappeared 10 000 years ago not completely understood?" 2. Goodberry and Create Food - again, not only to enable some survival gameplay, but also for worldbuilding. (Goodberry is only partially banned, it still heals but doesn't nourish.) The worldbuilding part is that with airships around, if there wasn't _some_ limit on their range, there wouldn't be any unexplored continents. Columbus' expedition wasn't considered a folly because 15th century people thought the Earth was flat, it was considered a folly because he thought the Earth was much smaller than the - more-or-less correct - consensus of the day, so if he had tried to cross from Portugal to India westward then he and his crew would have starved to death (if America hadn't been in the way). If Earth had clerics who could cast Create Food, this wouldn't have been a concern. 3. Remove Curse - only works on most curses if it is cast within 24 hours. Beyond that, it is only one component, and usually requires a ritual with other components. As for the limitations of Speak with Dead, one only has to play Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice to see the limitations. In that game, the core of the "justice" system of Kura'in is spirit channeling: the victims final memories are summoned into a scrying pool, and it is then accepted as evidence. However, before the arrival of our hero Phoenix, this sent thousands of innocents to the gallows because they exterminated their lawyers, and nobody was there to cross-examine them. A lot of the time the victim's memories were unreliable, or straight-up misinterpreted. (And of course if you're running a murder mystery and a player has Speak with Dead, just make sure that the victim was poisoned or stabbed in the back.)

Speaking as a player, I have issues with the way some DM's deal with remove curse by making it into a non-spell. Curses are already something that doesn't come up very often, at least in the games I play, so it kind sucks that the one time you get to use the one spell to help, you're effectively told "no, go fuck yourself." Like, I was in a game where my rogue had a sentient cursed magic sword. It was really strong, but it also actively wanted to eat her soul when she would die. But I couldn't get rid of it even if I wanted to because the DM straight up told me "no, remove curse doesn't work." And that's been the case pretty much every time I see curses come up in games. I personally like how Pathfinder does it, in that it's a check against the cruse's dc to get rid of it. The more powerful the curse, the higher the DC to counteract it. It feels more fair so players have a chance against it even if it would be difficult and the DM doesn't get cheated out of their plot hook they came up with. That would be a more balance way to fixing it instead of making it into a useless spell.

I’d say guidance has to be stated before the player rolls after a roll has been asked for. Allows a chance for them to give guidance and helps prevent pre rolling

Haven't gotten all the way through the video, you may touch on this later but I wanted to get it written out while I was thinking about it. As a DM, I make a couple of assumptions with my players in session 0. First, when it comes to the world they live in, the characters are smarter than the players. So I would allow things like some over the table talk about situations where an experienced adventurer might know something that the player would not, or that they'd know the basics of tracking, forest craft, singing, conversation with nobles, etc. BUT there are many situations where the players are smarter than the characters, so at the same time I would prevent the character from acting on information the PLAYER knows. Things like "I botched that roll, I need one of the others to take over something I specialize in". This applies to spells like guidance because they often try to use it as a REACTION when something is currently happening, rather than beforehand. The other thing I do is remind characters of the way the spell is written, especially if they try to abuse it. Comprehend languages: you must touch the surface the writing is on, so you can't read the archway above a door if you can't reach it (or have someone give you a boost) and it takes a minute to cast. Silvery Barbs is a great example of this: RAW, the spell belongs to the Silverquill school of Strixhaven, and if you aren't a student there, you have no way to know the spell. If the spell has a verbal component, they can't cast it in the middle of a social scenario without being noticed, questioned, and potentially stopped. All that said, I also bend every one of the above rules if the rule of cool wins out, or if I see the player is demoralized by the action (not the character) and is genuinely not enjoying the game. Because this is a game first and foremost, and if everyone isn't having fun, what is the point. The only rule I enforce 100% of the time is this: COMMUNICATE with me. Tell me what you are wanting out of the game, what you are planning and need some compromise or help on, and how we as a group can make this a fun environment for everyone. Sometimes that means reflavoring a game mechanic, and sometimes that means outright ignoring certain rules. Cause it's our game, in that moment. And the game is made up, and the rules don't matter. :)

Depending on my prep, I've actually had cyphered a message/handout for the characters. If they have the comprehend languages, I'd give them a key to break it, and they'd still have to long hand translate it. Or it gives them a word for word translation, but not the metaphorical meanings if it's hidden behind that.

Good video. Always interesting to listen to takes about House Rules. On a different note: One thing I've noticed being done A LOT in these videos and I've begun noticing and really pay attention after your PHB covers reviews. You use the crutch "We''ll talk about this later/We'll get there soon/We'll get back to this" constantly. In the PHB review it was a funny bit. But it did lampshade how frequently this literary device is used in general.

24:41 The advice to have Conjure Animals conjure a mix of different animal types would tune down the spell’s power but keep in mind that also means there are even more creature stat blocks in play! Probably better to keep all conjured animals the same type but add a random element to what animals get conjured.

This is a video that not only I got useful insigth to improve myself as DM from what Mike said, but from useful tips that people shared in the comments. Great topic and I should save this video apart and come back from time to time if needed.

This is a good channel. I like Mike.

I like the in-character investigation created by banning short rest identifying and the identify spell. I have a ring that has four abilities that trigger based on random words so the player is incentivised to talk in character more. I had an axe that could be charged up by killing monsters so my player had two options keep charging it up and suffer the consequences or stop charging it up. Simple choice, but big impact. I have an amulet that was used by an npc so the player knew some of what it could already do before testing it out. You would be surprised how creative players can be when testing magic items.

I dont ban any spells, because i find it sort of lazy on my end as a GM however, there are some limitations i enforce, typically on things i claim to be game breaking, like the technical infinite simulacrum loop.

i dont ban anything, i explicitly make my enemy spellcasters learn from the spells the party defaults towards, and plan their tactics around it. You need to actually be able to SEE two enemies at once for say, silvery barbs to function, which means keeping the enemies seperated out of LOS of the party caster. tactics, i have found, are more fun for the players to try to overcome with all their fancy tricks, rather than taking their tricks away for "fairness"

Treantmonk has a great couple videos highlighting spells he loves as a DM but hates as a player and vice versa. Great advice and good observations.

I didn't ask about taking Silvery Barbs because I felt I would be getting away with something. I asked because there's controversy about the spell. My DM knows that I'm not one to abuse game mechanics, so we decided to see how it goes. I offered that if either of us is feeling that the spell is problematic or disruptive, that we'd either adjust the spell, or exclude it from the game. We're all working together to have fun playing a game. Epic moments for the characters is fun, be they epic moments of triumph, or epic moments of struggle.

For inspiration on speak with dead, try Pushing Daisies, they ask a man who killed him, he said his wife, he tasted something off in the coffee she made him, he went back to being dead, they then learned he was a polygamist.

9:06 a few aspects about comprehend language that dms should consider before outright banning number one the spell does not decode codes or secret messages meaning you can set an entire adventure around finding a cipher number 2 you must touch a page for a minute to read it meaning dms can keep things from being translated by adding some time sensitivity or preventing the text from being touched

Anyone interested in finding ways to make mysteries that work around Speak with Dead in their games should check out the show "Pushing Daisies." That's basically the main character's whole deal; he can touch something dead and bring it to life, and then touch them again to return them to rest. He uses that power to make pies with eternally fresh fruit, but another main character convinces him to use that ability to interview the recently deceased to help solve their own murders.

My solution for the Resurrection spells is pretty simple, you can only get brought back once. I've toyed with exceptions to that, the one I've settled on is you can only be brought back once by the standard Resurrection spells, and once by Reincarnation. This applies to using Wish to recreate any of the Resurrection spells, however if you use the version of Wish that can risk you losing the ability to cast Wish ever again, that one can work on you as many times as you want, because the price for that is risking losing the spell, and let's be honest, Wish should usually just work. And yes I've really thought through the logistics of this. "Oh why would you ever use the higher level, more expensive spells if your revivify takes the one do-over anyways?" Simple, the advantage of the higher level spells is that since you don't have to use them immediately, you don't need to keep them always prepared like Revivify, thus you can have another combat or utility spell to hopefully prevent death in the first place. And as you use the even higher spells you can over come more difficult situations, like disintegration, it's all already built in. As for flavor/in game reasoning for this? Well you know that diamond all the standard Res spells use? Yeah well the somatic component for casting those spells is cutting out the heart and replacing it with the diamond a-la the Briarhearts from Skyrim. And no amount of healing will ever fully repair the wound. Boom, you can't be Res'd again because you only had the one heart, and it's a permanent reminder of what happened. Even if you later use your one use of Reincarnation, your body still has the wound and the diamond for the heart. For easy mode version of these rules, each level of Res spell can be used once each. So you get one Revivify, one Raise Dead, one Resurrection, etc. The higher level spells can be used in place of the lower level ones, but not the other way around. (i.e. you could theoretically be True Res'd 4 times, and then never be able to be Res'd again with any spell, but you'd only ever get one Revivify)

Great video, Mike, gave me a lot of food for thought as a GM. For what it's worth, in my own games, with resurrection spells I don't add a difficulty level, but introduce consequences for over use on the same individuals (straining the soul or the threads of fate etc). One thought for potentially improving silvery barbs might be that it just forces a re-roll, not disadvantage, which would still make it a good option for countering critical hits, but less of a reflexive option for a standard hit.

I've changed Silvery Barbs to be 2nd level. It still gets used, but not as much. I also don't tell people more information when hit, other than "you are hit". I started this a long time ago due to the Shield spell. When I give damage I'll inform them if it was a crit with the description of the damage but it is too late to use a "when hit" reaction. They could still use a "when taking damage" reaction of course. This way these reactions are not only used when most effective. I also like the narrative, especially with Shield of the attack sometimes blowing through their hasty defense.

The bit about Counterspell reminded me of a campaign that had been one of the best I was ever in, until the GM decided to make the boss of the campaign and all of the monsters backing him up totally immune to magic. I was playing a character whose offensive abilities were all based on spellcasting, so while the other players were getting moments of being absolute badasses, I was barely making a dent on anything. I spent most of the fight mentally checked out, and doing 2-20 hit points of damage to monsters that had hundreds of hp. It went from being one of the best campaigns to one of the absolute worst in a single session.

I remember when silvery barbs came bursting onto the scene I also remember the immediate backlash and hatred that it got. Frankly speaking Mike, I think your way of handling it is the best. Don't outright ban it but give it a cost and make it difficult to acquire

DMs can take a que from old adventures where certain areas/dungeons have conditions that make certain magic not work. It was very common to have a king list of spells that “simply don’t work”

When it comes to Counterspell, for my table, I use it and the players use it. Had a player who was an abjurstion wizard and at 10th level they can add their proficiency bonus to their counterspell check so it was rare they failed a counterspell and they LOVED it, especially when it was against high level spells and other counterspells

Can't wait for this prophesied new age mystery for d&d

As a player my DMs never banned any spell. Sometimes they have changed something to the effects. (Revive are often more complicated than using a spell slot, consume some shiny rocks and nothing more.) As a DM I never ban any spells. After the first change in the UA, I’ve tried Guidance as a reaction fore a one shot and, at my table, the change of the casting time solved some problems (and created some others, lol). And for counterspell my rules are “not in every combat” and “the same amount of caster that can counterspells the party have” (+1 if the encounter is very hard and make sense to have this bunch of spellcasters).

Hey Mike, great video! I dunno much about videos uploaded to KZfaq and how easy it is or isn't to edit them once uploaded, but I just want to let you know that when you are talking about teleportation magic and intend to put Transport Via Plants on-screen, you instead put True Resurrection up. Like I said, dunno if it's something you can fix or not, but figured you should know at least. Hope you're having a good day!

I tend to distill my thoughts on Guidance to one simple phrase: "Guidance is not a Reaction spell". Falling off a cliff? No you can't use Guidance because the Athletics check to catch yourself is a Reaction, you literally don't have time. Checking to see if you know something? No you can't use Guidance, because checks like that are just things I have you roll outside of the normal turn structure. Beyond stuff like that I don't worry about it that much.

What if remove curse worked to give you leads / rules for breaking it, and maybe it helps with one ingredient so the players get 1 agency (they get to choose which ingredient they dont want to get), 2 the spell helps clear the curse (it provides the clear conditions and 1 ingredient of the players choice) and 3 the dm still get to make removing the curse harder and more interesting.

I've recently joined my first campaign (a few sessions in, after finally wrapping my head around how to play with the help of bg3 lol - it's a much less overwhelming introduction) and there's a lot of 'banned' spells in our campaign... but it doesn't really feel like that because it's part of the setting that they're missing. Also, we gained access to one of the spells (true resurrection) as a one time cast as a randomly rolled quest reward and it felt amazing ahaha, so the "fun" of banning vs not banning really is context dependent

This vid has reminded the importance of question for spells from earlier editions. I like the idea of sending players on quests for wish and silverly barbs. And require things like having access to a teleportation circle. I'm also into make material components quests to some level of another. Particularly plane shift tuning forks. I think it brings a interesting challenge to being the most powerful classes at your table. You need to quest to use that power

I created a selection of game changing spells like teleportation or planeshift, wish for example, you can only learn thaht kind of spell after completing a relevant quest to unlock it frol a tome ou scroll or a lamp. Some curses are so powerful that can only be supressed for awhile and not cured with just one cast and require a ritual withe remove curse and other components

Guidance for me is pretty simple, you have to cast it before the roll is made. You can apply it to any roll, but only if you call it out before the player rolls. BG3 is the one that helped me realize it, as that’s how it works within the game.

I've run a lot of murder mysteries in 5e, both of the "the cops cant interfere, theres a murderer among you, try to survive while you investigate" and of the "you work for the cops and run homicide, do an investigation" variety. My suggestion for the first kind would be to just set the player level at around level 3- this limits magic chicanery a fair bit, and also helps keeps tension up- a level 15 character is basically never gonna feel threatened by a classic murderer anyway, they're too big a pile of hitpoints and class features- but allows some variety in builds. For the second, i make a point of having speak eith dead and zone of truth be things the players colleagues already tried- you dont need to do a multi day investigation if you can ask the corpse who killed them and then confirm with a zone of truth, so every mystery starts with one of three results: the deceased's soul cant give an answer (it didnt see the person who did it, or it was obliterated, indicating a professional assassin of some kind), the deceased gave unvarifiable information (either the person they named cannot be found, or they have claimed something like an alien creature did it) or the zone of truth questioning has revealed contradictory information. Theres always some room for more thorough use of those spells and better wuestioning to get more info, but i find it useful as a place for them to start.

I like how the understand langauge spell has the perfect answer baked in "Just make important documents a Cyhper or half of the words" 😂

I rarely use counter spell as a DM for all the reasons you listed. There is just other fun things to use your reaction on as a caster that are really fun if you look for them.

For remove curse, I make it to where it works like dispel magic where it only removes curses of a certain level. Higher level spell slots are needed for stronger curses.

So i tend to run Remove Curse in a very similar way to how i see a lot of people run revival spells; it requires input from the players and is not just a "spell slot spent, consquences of my actions gone." Usually this is in the form of "welp i got lycanthropy, ill probably need something involved with werewolves to remove said curse as a compnent of my spell." I will likely be adding the "Remove Curse tells you how to remove it" thing to this formula, as its actually had soemtimes to give the players information on what kinds of things would help remove curses that are less simple than lycnsthropy or vampirism.

I wanna add what I do for the resurrection spells in my homebrew world! So firstly, I use material components. And those spells cost diamonds. In my homebrew world, diamonds are rare because the rich upper class horde them to keep themselves and their interests alive. So it's already a big deal when they get a diamond. But! I also have this lore that each time you die, your soul costs 100g more and thus the diamond they use needs to reflect that. It's also great for npc's. In my world there are these things called "Parlor debates" where rich lords settle disputes with fights to the death with their (uhh) "forced servants" and the loser just gets resurrected until their lord decides they have lost too much and their soul isn't worth it. It has been amazing so far for my world!

So I noticed that when you were talking about transport via plants you put up true resurrection instead.

For remove curse I like it to temporarily negate the curses’ effect. Meaning it helps to stabilize a party member while they can resolve their quest for actually removing the curse

One way I could see counter spell being limited in its uses would be to make it so that yes you do interrupt the casting of a spell but the afflicted retains its action so it can cast another leveled spell since it didn’t cast a spell with its first spell due to counter spell but due to the lose in time you must cast a spell of a lower level than the spell slot you tried to use.

I'd never heard of Healing Spirit until this video (the druids and rangers I tend to play with don't tend to take healing spells) so I was looking at the graphic confused as to why people thought it was broken, only for you to say that's the reprint. Another lesson in why watching the video before writing a comment is important 😅

I gave some thought to how remove curse would work if I ran a game, and I decided I'd run it the same way as Counterspell or Dispell Magic. Just also have to figure out what "level" to make curses.

On the topic of curses, one option is to say that a curse can only be removed with a special material component, or at a specific place. The other thing is to consider curses as spell slot costs, it costs a player a 3rd level spell slot, so they can either deal with the curse for a day or expend a spell slot. That is minus one fireball or dispel magic or aura of vitality for the party. A third thing is to have the curse only be removed if cast at a certain level, "this curse can be removed only if remove curse is cast using a 7th level spell slot"". And you can mix and match material component and timing/spacing. A curse that can only be removed if the remove curse spell is cast using a 6th level spell slot while under a full moon on the top the highest boulder in a druid grove when an awakened tree is present? That's a lot of circumstance.

I altered how remove curse worked, to have it work more akin to dispel magic and counterspell. It's only come up once, but i considered werewolf lycanthropy to be a 7th level curse, so my player needed to pass a dc 17 spellcasting ability check without proficiency to remove the curse. They pulled it off, but it had the chance to fail.

For Identify I tend to just use blind arcana or history checks with a DC based on the rarity of the item. The spell itself is just a guarantee that you get the right results, since the player didn't see the roll they have no idea if the information I gave them from a check was wholly accurate. Also attuning an item reveals its properties as normal, but of course is much riskier because of curses that usually apply once attuned and things like that. I tend to make curses quite common, but not super debilitating too, often the more powerful the item's effects the more likely it carries some sort of curse as a downside. Detect magic is also a pseudo identify effect, since it gives you a hint about the school of magic that the enchanted item carries, and of course whether its a magic sword or just a well made one... or if its a mimic...

37:42 I like wish, since it can allow some really interesting sittuations if you are in a high level campaign (also, it can end up badly if you aren't careful with how you word your wish, while also being able to lose the spell if you roll less than 33 in a d100). I was literally thinking about using the wish spell to make a crossover for the final fight of a campaign, breaking the barriers of time and planes to allow all the parties that are doing the adventure my DM is running on that module he created for a final battle against the BBEG of the campaign (also,s ince the BBEG is not native of the plane we are in, this will also allow to kill her permanently.). Also, my character has seen the spell cast before, as an NPC used it in a sittuation in which we were extremely screwed, and that NPC lost the ability to cast spells forever, since he depleted his whole magical reserves by forcing the spell before he was able to wield it naturally (also, he almost dies during that casting, as he ended up with a maximum HP of 10 after that casting to show how much it had drained him), so, my character knows the spell, but not how to draw that much magical energy (since my character only knows up to level 6 spells). I think that is a spell that one should look forward to, but also know what they are getting into, making the spell something that the players don't want to use unless they need to, since the consequences could be devastating.

We also use the "you can cast Guidance if it makes sense for the characters in-world to be doing that" rule. It helps that our cleric is a ditz and tends to forget about it, so my rogue is usually the one (in character) requesting to have Guidance cast on him. If it's a borderline case, I always check with the DM first if Guidance can be used or not. It's never really been an issue for us (the biggest challenge is reminding the cleric that Guidance and Enhance Ability are both concentration, so he can only use one or the other).

I actually added to counterspell, this is bc I knew going in that some of my players were goobers, I added a sneaky option to counter spell (basically if you use a 1st level spell slot with the original spell slot to cast counterspell, you can roll a deception check to do the counterspell without letting the victim know)

Charm creature spells and abilities does have limitations, for example you could give your boss advantage on charm effects letting your enchantment focused players realize it won’t be easy to deal with them, and if they do succeed they simply won’t be targeted as the charmed creature believes everything you do to the other party is to benefit it.

One way to help with silvery barbs is to narrate a damage from a critical at the moment you deal the damage, this way whoever have the spell is going to guess if should use it based on other factors, like if you need to protect an ally thats low on hp or concentrating a spell

So in my homebrew game I run Remove Curse kinda like the channel divinity Turn Undead or a little like counterspell. Curses have spell levels, if the curse is the same level or lower it works as written. If the curse is one or two levels higher, Remove Curse disables it temporarily normally an hour. If the curse is three spell levels or more above the level you cast remove cures it does nothing. I let my players know ahead of time there are a couple "primal curses" that can't be removed normally and need special materials. Lycanthropy and vampirism are the examples I used.

In my campaign I had a player with a rogue wizard multiclass that took Silvery Barbs. I think they only cast it once or twice. There were a few resons: First, I tended to run battles across larger spaces to keep themselves safe my casters tend to stay making the action they wanted to interrupt outside their range. Second, most of the time, when it was used my rerolls succeeded, so they ended up seeing it as an iffy choice. Third they had several reaction options, so often they did not have a reaction. It was often a choice of Shield, Counterspell or SB.

For Conjure Animals, I did the whole "summon 8 dinosaurs" thing once, and then my DM and I had a chat where we basically decided that in combat I would only use the 1 or 2 creature options.

Remove Curse in older editions had a caster level check you had to pass to remove most curses, so you could have curses that were easier or harder to remove, or even ones where they wouldn't be able to remove it now, but they could in a couple levels when they got stronger, if you're having problems with it, you could implement something like that into your games to help mitigate that issue.

My DM had me buy Silvery Barbs for more expensive than a normal first level spell scroll and then I had to roll to keep it. I won't abuse it because I'm grateful to me DM for allowing me to get it. (I play a follower of Beshaba and I really like the badluck feel to it)

31:52 - Your hands won't be cold and dead, they'll just be replaced by elf hands. Or gnome, or dwarf, or backwards rakshasa hands, if things get _really_ weird.

In the current Exandria game I am dm'ing, there r several spells that I haven't banned per say; more like locked. Players must come across either a culture that possessesit, or a being of magic that might have access, etc. I feel it promotes the urge to travel and expand their own world around them.

My solution on the conjure XXX spells when multiple creatures are conjured is to give each PC one of the summons to control and the summons takes their turn when the player controlling them takes their turn. Another speedup trick is to use average damage so you are only rolling to hit.

You could use Remove Curse sort of like Revivify for Curses. It can remove a curse if it's cast within a certain time frame, sort of like a setting in period. If the players don't know they have lycanthropy, and don't find out until the first full moon after they contract it, it will be far too late for remove curse to work. But the next time they fight a werewolf, they'll know to treat that bite fast.

As a GM, I haven't had a problem (yet) with Silvery Barbs. Sometimes imposing disadvantage results in a greater roll and the attack still hits. It's not as reliable as just cast Shield or Absorb Elements. I get where others come from about the utility of the spell.

I think a safer solution for Remove Curse would be to demand material components and set conditions for it to work on certain curses. Curses that demand this involvement would mostly include Vampirism, Lycanthropy, or anything that a Hag could give you. I.E., save those kinds of curses for entities who actually have some status. If you used remove curse on a cursed magic item, would simply give you the chance to unattune and leave it for the next sad sap to pick it up.

If I need to maintain a mystery behind another language in my games, I have come up with a cool antimagic effect on the writing. Basically anytime anyone tries to use magic directly on the writing, it counterspells it automatically. I don't do this unless the mystery RELIES on the writing being unable to be read, I always have multiple ways to decode it through other means, and if they really can't crack it, I have a special artifact that turns out to have been hidden somewhere in the world that will allow them to deactivate the counterspell effect.

guidance is such a non issue lol. people are so dramatic.

An idea for how to fix the lack of fun experienced by a counterspell deleting a player’s spell might be to make its effect an unstable misdirect to a random spell (or magical class ability) in their list. The player still casts a spell for their spell slot (maybe even a different spell slot associated with the new spell) and it adds an unpredictable feeling of wild magic interference. It also has the potential to be even more effective than the spell they originally intended (for better and for worse). This can also be a cheaper version of a the true (RAW) counterspell. A “MisSpelling” perhaps.

I'll I've said about power gaming with spells is if you want the spell to do that cool thing, keep in mind I will use it against you with an enemy caster. This has kept the requests within the realm of reaspnability

I try to only take Silvery Barbs when I'm playing a trickster character or a primarily support character since it makes thematic sense. Hell, my Tabaxi sorc with that and subtle spell used it to mess with the party as often as they used it in combat.

Not sure if this counts, but how do you feel about Quasits and Imps as familiars? I bring this up In regards to the spell Flock of Familiars. I had a player pull this once where they then had a small army of invisible demons.

Oh man torchwood! Honestly a torchwood dnd campaign would be so fun

Haven't started the video beyond informing players prior to campaign about any banned spells, but wanted to share what I presently limited in my game and why. I have banned spells like Planeshift because a key plot point in my campaign is that the antagonists are trying to summon their gods into the material realm so having a spell that does it defeats the premise, though there are points in the world where you can go from Material Realm to the Fae Wilds but they are few and far between. The only other spell I didn't ban, but advised my sorcerer not to take at this point is Teleportation Circle, primarily because I was unaware of the spell myself and they opted to take it without reading it once able, so after reviewing discussed allowing them to change it out because I didn't prepare any circles for them to use prior to that point and didn't want them to feel they wasted a known spell as a result.

Totally recommend the show Pushing Daisies for a modern take on Speak with Dead fun times~

for guidance I’ve ruled that it can only be used a number of times per day equal to proficiency bonus. It’s not a crazy limit but it stops players from spamming it For remove curse I’ve made it so if it can’t remove a curse it instead tells you how to lift it. That way it is still useful without it breaking certain plot hooks

Personally, I love the revive spells. I treat them essentially like regular healing but with higher costs. They still cost spell slots and components, so you can't revivify willy-nilly, and that leads to great tension when characters die but the healer doesn't have the right spell slot, or no one has enough diamonds. I know some people want to treat character death as seriously as in any non-fantasy world, but I think it's more interesting coming at it from the pov of a world with this established magic like when playing a jrpg. Deaths aren't always final, but when they are it's all the more impactful because you had ways to stop it.

The spells that I have "banned", especially for campaigns with newer players are "Wish" and "Dream the Blue Veil". Wish has the power to break the reality of the game that is running. And more often than not, the very literal interpretation of the request is what has been given for the result. Dream the Blue Veil would often just completely ruin the fantasy because of the party hopping from one campaign setting into another that their character should not have any knowledge of to even begin with. Granted arguments could potentially be made, but I likely soft ban this to remove the complete leaving from the narrative being told by me as the DM. The caveat to the above, is my longer running group of players (5+ years) have a bit more leniency regarding the use of such powerful reality breaking spells. I recently allowed a player to use the Dream the Blue Veil spell. However the one thing I did modify to it is adding the cumulative 25% chance to potentially never be able to cast it again. Such as Wish. There is a chance you can never cast it again. And I feel that an appropriate balance to the mechanical offering in the spell. Just my two cents on the conversation 😊😅

Currently playing a survival game set in an expansive desert setting on giant walkers. Part of the story is the Goddess of life, agriculture, and nature has been locked away into a giant obelisk in the middle of the desert. This is what caused the continent to be destroyed by sand and scorching heat. As such Good berry and create food and water do not function in this continent, in story due to the Goddess' entrapment, but mechanically to make the survival element work as those to spells would literally make survival in the desert a breeze. Upon freeing the Goddess the land will become verdant and those spells will return to working once more. (Although I hate it I will be allowing silvery barbs in my next campaign, that spell came out after this one started and we tend not to incorporate new spells in old campaigns)

I have been using the minion rules from flee mortals for the conjure spells that summon tons of baddies. I don’t mind a single earth elemental or demon or what ever. But 8 velociraptors is silly especially if multiple players are doing so.

I don't like Guidance because it's a Cantrip. Similar to BG3, you just cast it by default; accordingly I expect GMs to adjust the DC. It would be more meaningful if it's a leveled spell with the number of uses for the castee determined by the level the spell is cast at, for example.

Back in some 3rd party 3E or 3.5E book we had a guy who wanted to add a whole subset of blood and bone themed spells, and the DM said thats fine, but it means I also get to use whatever is in the book. So the player got to basically snap his fingera and boil the blood out of creatures at something like 100ft, and the DM added some kind of black magic cancer tumour to the world. He got to cripple enemies before the melee guys (like my paladin) could reach them, and the DM could make peasants explode 3 days after catching the plague turning their remains into undead and their souls into shadows creatures or something I think. It was part of my Paladins fall because we found a town where everyone had been infected and we were told there was no way to cure them all. There wasnt enough time to use enough spells, it was already super resistant to that anyway, and the one time we had attempted a surgical removal it had taken half a day for one patient. The only option to stop it spreading was to slaughter the whole town.

Idk if it exists but I use a counterspell alt that basically nullify the spell, gives their spell slot back but makes it to they have to cast a different spell of a different school their next turn.

Guidance can be a ritual, or put a spendable limit on them. It should cost less than a 1st level spell but more than a free cantrip. It could cost a certain amount of gold to cast, it could incur diety disapproval (roll a d20 for each guidance…on a 1 they incur wrath from the god) there are many ways to make it work if the players are on board

Love the shirt. Where did you get it? I'm also a bigger guy, and can never find a good place to get shirts that fit.

Identify is very useful, but most people don't think about it because they only think about using the spell on magic items they pick up. The actual use is to cast it on people who might be under a spell effect, or casting it on items you can't pick up, like a strange statue or a suspicious wall.

about the start adressing DMs: people need to remember it's a. game and the goal is to have fun with the group. fun can look very different depending on the group. some like easily, casual gameplay. some like challenging gameplay. some like punishing gameplay. some even enjoy small amounts of temporary frustration before the payoff. all these things are valid. the point is that it fits the group. so, DMs should try to find the balance that works for their group. DMs on a powertrip or who get antagonistic aren't fun for anyone. yes, the DM has the last say and makes the rules. but keep it within reason

The only spell I banned was Chaos Bolt. Because it was impossible to code in Fantasy Grounds since you don't know the damage type until you have already rolled the damage, which requires backtracking.