

Jolt of pain's damage has been contentious at times, but its limited 30 ft. While it's potent in the hands of a Tempest cleric that takes feats or multiclasses to pick it up, it doesn't seem too much more potent than the other lightning damage effects that the Tempest cleric can maximize.

It's certainly strong, largely because of its versatility, but in playtesting it has proven less effective than other 1st-level spells.

While it does let you deal damage with your reaction, it does less damage on average than hellish rebuke which is also a 1st-level reaction spell that does damage (2d6 or sometimes 3d6 vs. But we're fallible too! Not to disagree with you, but I can share a few thoughts :)įor Radic's sudden spark, it's certainly at its most powerful in the hands of a gish. The idea being that content which players find too weak to use might as well not exist for those players. That's an understandable perspective! We try to make sure that player options are powerful enough to be competitive with the average and better-than-average options in the existing game, but without surpassing the most powerful options available. I would just recommend other DMs give serious thoughts to how they structure adventures, party comp, and the levels they plan to play the party through before freely allowing the defensive spells in this resource. That said, we can have different homebrew philosophies and that's fine. There's something to be said for simplicity, but there is also a certain amount of future-proofing one should strive for if you're hoping lots of people will use something. If saying they were comparable effects and thus don't stack didn't have a significant impact on power level, why not include it? Barring your playtesting covering the vast majority of party compositions over all levels against many different foes, I would think falling back more on 5e's core design - which is to limit conditional bonus stacking - would make sense if it didn't cause any issues during playtest. I highly recommend checking out the rest of the compendium - I'm sure you'll find something in it that you like :) With that said, this is a pretty easy thing to change if you don't like it. We tried additional restrictions, but they ultimately didn't change the power level much, as stacking the effects was just so costly most of the time. It can be a potent strategy, but not any more than other team strats (team darkvision/darkness, team paralysis, etc.) And it doesn't protect at all against saving throws. There are a lot of positional drawbacks, it is very costly, and it doesn't allow for much offensive power. Few characters can use shield, and leaf shield doesn't stack with normal shields, minimizing the amount of AC one can stack with it. What you describe is possible but in playtesting it has proven to be not as effective as it might seem - it burns through spell slots incredibly fast while leaving the party extremely vulnerable to area damaging spells and other non-AC effects, as they'd have to group together for mass shield. I'm sorry you feel that way, but I guarantee you that it has been addressed and considered. It would be easy to tweak out as a DM by editing the wordings, but that kind of forethought is something I kind of hope and expect to see already handled in good homebrew and this doesn't do that surrounding defensive spells It would be easy to tweak out as a DM by editing the wordings, but that kind of forethought is something I kind of hope and expect to see already handled in good homebrew and this doesn't do that surrounding defensive spells, particularly as you could also stack other spells in this supplement onto the above interaction. However, it's still a level of conditional bonus stacking that's ill-suited for 5e's focus on Bounded Accuracy and is going to make balancing encounters more difficult. This is the biggest balance issue that jumped out to me - Shield Other, Mass Shield, and Shield can all be stacked "RAW" as they're not the same spell or expressly called out as being the same effect before even getting into Leaf Shield and the other options.Ĭan be cool to see an entire party come together for B.S. A group with a bunch of spellcasters can stack unique, but functionally very similar effects on each other to cover up what should be a weak spot for them. All fine on their own, but collectively I don't think having so many defensive spell options is a good thing. Mass shield, Leaf Shield, Shield Other, Shining Armor, Shelter from Energy, and probably more I've overlooked.
