5th Edition D&D Limit Breaks, Part 3

How Far Is Too Far?

And How Far Is Not Far Enough?

Building a Better D&D Experience

by Meorty Matt

Anytime you pick up a game that involves pen & paper, dice, cards with a lot of words on them, or even a video game that grants you the freedom to build a character to your liking, there will come a moment when you have a clear choice. That is, a choice between doing what makes sense thematically (or flavor-wise) and doing what makes sense for your own self-interest. At the best of times, these two options will not be diametrically opposed or might actually be the same option. At the worst of times, extreme suspension of disbelief is required to continue without wanting to shout obscenities or throw something. What does any of this have to do with 5E?

5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons is not perfect. There, I said it.

This goes beyond the problems that have been inherent to D&D since it was but a twinkle in Gary Gygax’s eye. After all, D&D describes a bizarre, illogical world where killing things makes you better at everything, genocide is not just a defensible action but a moral imperative, entire economies hinge around the spending habits of mass murderers, and two-foot-tall gnomes can be as strong as ten-foot-tall ogres. That doesn’t mean the rules can’t be internally consistent, logical, and balanced. You do have to put a lot of work into spelling it out and avoiding ambiguous language, but it can be done.

Unfortunately, the 5E D&D PHB does not always do this. Anyone who claims that the 5E core rules are perfect (or even a flawless masterpiece) is just wrong, plain and simple. There are several problematic areas within the rules, where either the mechanics are unclear, the developer’s intent is unclear, there is a significant balance problem with no easy in-game remedy, there are flat-out mistakes, or some combination of these elements. It’s easy to get blindsided when you’re more interested in kicking down the next door and looting the dungeon than in parsing out the meaning of every sentence in the chief rules document available to players.

[NOTE: To make matters even more confusing, one of the devs, Mike Mearls, has made numerous comments on Twitter in response to rules questions. His comments precede any attempt to publish an official 5E FAQ or Errata, so they are the closest thing concerned D&D players have to a response by WotC (as of this writing). Most of the comments are stated as opinions or personal rulings and some do not adequately or convincingly address the questions they were made in response to. Do not expect all of Mr. Mearls’s tweets to be vindicated by an official errata.]

How does this affect you as a player or DM? You’re going to have to decide how much you allow these problem areas to affect your use of the rules. Will you avoid anything that’s likely to create trouble, just to spare yourself the headache of figuring out what should actually happen? Will you exploit the rules for all they’re worth and make others pay the price for your superior knowledge of 5th Edition? Or will you try to correct apparent mistakes and improve upon a system that took thousands upon thousands of hours to create and codify, to create a better experience for yourself and others?

They’re all legitimate choices. Up until now the focus of this blog has been on exploiting the rules for best effect, and challenging the rules as written (RAW) has been treated as forbidden territory. Now that the DMG has been released, you’ve had time to digest it all, and the 5E core rules are as complete as can be within official material, let’s talk a little about making D&D a better game for everyone.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

DRUIDS & WILD SHAPE

 

This is probably redundant with many of the complaints already floating out there on the interweb: Druids of the Circle of the Moon are broken. Obnoxiously, game-warpingly broken. What other class at level 2 can effectively give a character 90 bonus hit points per short rest? You’re going to absorb more punishment than the party Barbarian and make everyone else look silly for trying to matter.

Credit to reader Shalmdi for asking the necessary question: how do you deal with this? If you want to address the Druid problem within the game, as a DM, you can focus enemy attacks primarily on the Druid, you can throw tougher opponents in general at the party, or you can devise smart tactics for enemies to commonly employ against anyone who uses Wild Shape. As a PC, you can roleplay the fear and revulsion that a “normal” person might feel in the presence of such a horrifyingly powerful shapeshifter, to the point of avoiding physical contact or even refusing to aid them in combat.

Either way, you’re going to seem very anti-Druid and opposed to the ‘natural’ order of the game. Worse, you’ll probably wind up punishing the entire party for one player’s choices. Yet, credible threats to any Druid played with intelligence will not occur without some heavy-handed meddling. Remember, one of the other chief benefits of Wild Shape, besides the special abilities of the new form and the wildly excessive bonus hit points (see what I did there?), is total replacement of the Druid’s physical ability scores. Dumped your Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution like a cheap date after a one-night stand? No problem, at least in RAW.

Druids (and ONLY Druids) can get away with that sort of lunacy with no magical items involved–they can literally max out their mental ability scores for no good reason and be perfectly fine–better than fine, actually. They’ll be in Wild Shape most of the time anyway. If they don’t have any uses left? Oh, whatever, take a break, eat a sandwich, and one short rest later they’re back at the top of their game. It’s on you, faithful reader, to put a stop to this. So what should you do?

Unless you’re intent on exploiting the Moon Druid’s brokenness, change the rules. House rules are one of the saving graces of tabletop games. DMs are free to offer their own version of whatever game is being played, and players are free to dispute game mechanics. There are a couple of possibilities that readily spring to mind.

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The Pathfinder model: do NOT replace Wild Shaped character ability scores or hit points. Instead, ADD limited amounts to Druids’ ability scores when they Wild Shape, based on the form. Let the difference between the beast form Con bonus and the Druid’s normal bonus provide extra hit points that must be accounted for when the Druid changes back. If he lost them, he takes that much damage to his true form, even if that puts him at death’s door. Such a Druid could only be ‘knocked out’ of Wild Shape only by being knocked unconscious to begin with, so maybe that should incur a failed death save, too. It’s kind of harsh, but it’s up to the DM how much karmic punishment they want to visit on RAW abusers.

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The D&D classic model: replace Wild Shaped character ability scores, but NOT hit points. Ability score replacement is considerably simpler than augmentation, and that’s probably part of the reason that the devs did not change the ability score replacement model for this edition. Simply replace the Druid’s physical ability scores with those of his new form, as indicated by RAW. However, do NOT replace the Druid’s hit points with those of the new form. Have the Druid retain his true total, possibly with a temporary increase (it will be a multiple of the Druid’s level) if the form’s Constitution bonus is greater than the Druid’s normal Con bonus. Again, if you decide to allow any extra hit points from Wild Shape, make sure those hit points are repaid if the Druid changes back to normal form–it makes self-healing in Wild Shape a valuable and meaningful ability, and makes dumping Con an appropriately risky proposition.

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If you’re inclined toward largesse and you feel that the above options are too punitive, consider also giving the Druid damage resistance equivalent to a raging Barbarian’s, at least while he is in Wild Shape. There’s no real justification for it, but it’s another option for achieving a semblance of balance. Don’t rush to the Druid’s aid here, though. Odds are, if the player is not catastrophically reckless but mildly creative about the forms they choose, they’ll be ok regardless. Four hours as a giant eagle is the closest a player character gets to permaflight at Level 8.

TL;DR: Rein in your were-elephant’s bonus HP before it goes on a rampage. You’re not being unfair, you’re actually doing everyone a favor.

 

SHARPENING DEFINITIONS

KEEPING WEAPON ATTACKS PURE

 

If you’ve read the previous posts describing high damage builds, you’ll be familiar with the idea of increasing your every-round damage through various class features. If you haven’t read those posts, you might want to, because they illustrate an important point: figuring out how to deal optimal damage (and when your various bonuses apply) can be very difficult.

When it comes to weapon attacks, it’s generally straightforward. Each attack roll you make targets just one creature. In rare cases, such as a Ranger’s Multiattack, a single attack has multiple targets, but you still make a separate attack roll against each target. Damage bonuses, whether static or rolled, are clearly defined as applying to an attack as a whole (such as Great Weapon Master or Sharpshooter) or only to a single target of an attack (such as Divine Smite). No lack of clarity, no problem figuring out when to add your damage.

You could try to argue for a gray area, of course, if you want to suggest that unarmed attacks count as weapon attacks, but the devs consistently avoided conflating the two. (CORRECTION: Diligent reader Mark points out that no, the devs did NOT consistently avoid this. Unarmed strike is listed under “Simple Melee Weapons” on PHB p.149. This is not without controversy but it’s not nearly as clear-cut as I believed. Thanks for the correction, Mark.) One might surmise that they had a reason There’s a good reason not to count unarmed strikes as weapons, and it’s basically the same reason as in editions past–Flurry of Blows. In 5E, Monks can get up to FOUR attacks per round by Level 5, but two of those attacks must be unarmed attacks. Imagine what would happen if you could add Magic Weapon and Smite damage to your unarmed attacks–you would be wrecking everything in your path. Don’t make the mistake of saying that Martial Arts gives the Monk unarmed Finesse…

…it’s a slippery slope from there, once you remember that only weapons have the Finesse property. Why else spell out so clearly, “You can use Dexterity instead of Strength for the attack and damage rolls of your unarmed strikes and monk weapons,” without using the word Finesse? There’s an obvious answer to this false dilemma.

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Unarmed Attacks Are Not Weapon Attacks. No matter how much you would like for your character’s hands to be called “lethal weapons,” resist the impulse to meddle with the status quo. In this case, the status is quo for a good reason. the dark forces of munchkinry; it would have dire implications for a D&D world not yet overrun by Monk/Paladin goons. Weapons are weapons. Unarmed characters are, by definition, not using weapons.

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Ok, so it really should not be so hard to figure out when you can add your bonus damage or extra die rolls. But what about RErolls? The Great Weapon Fighting Fighting Style is all about that, yet the way it’s worded it seems to let you reroll more than just weapon damage. Check it out:

“When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die for an attack you make with a melee weapon that you are wielding with two hands, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll. The weapon must have the two-handed or versatile property for you to gain this benefit.” (Emphasis added.)

So the way it’s written, it seems like this lets you reroll Divine Smite/Improved Divine Smite, Superiority Dice, and Elemental Weapon damage. But does that really make sense? You’re so good at swinging your great axe that your god of justice lets you smite harder, too? Most of the pieces of this combo seem to be aligned with this outcome in mind: Great Weapon Fighting is a Fighting Style that Paladins get, Smite is a Paladin-only ability, and Elemental Weapon is a Paladin-only spell (despite having higher level spell slot effects that no single-classed Paladin would ever get access to). And the effect? About 6 extra damage per swing with full Smite/Improved Smite and leveled-up Elemental Weapon damage. That’s significantly better than any other offensive Fighting Style.

It’s a similar situation to the Warlock Polearm Master/War Caster. With those two feats, Pact of the Blade, Eldritch Blast, and Repelling Blast, you could effectively make sure that no single combatant could ever get too close to you. Effectively, you’re so good with a spear that you can blast enemies in the face as soon as they get in spear range. But that’s not at all what the devs intended, nor should they have. So how should you rule on it?

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Great Weapon Fighting & Polearm Master Affect Only the WEAPONS They Are Specific To (their attacks, damage, and die rolls) and not other unrelated abilities. Great Weapon Fighting is meant to prevent a catastrophic failure of weapon damage, not to bump up the damage of magical add-ons. It does its job if it causes rerolls of just weapon damage dice (and associated weapon crit damage dice, including the one from Savage Attacks). Polearm Master is meant to make you better with polearms, not Eldritch Blasts; don’t allow the substitution of a spell for a reaction attack when something enters polearm range.

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TL;DR: When dealing damage with weapons, just follow the rules where they’re clear and you’ll be fine. Pretty much everything’s clearly spelled out, and specific trumps general as usual. Where the devs clearly goofed and left out some vital restrictions on weapon-enhancing abilities, add those restrictions in yourself.

 

YES, ALL WARLOCKS

SPELL DAMAGE BONUSES

 

This is where things start to get (for lack of a better term) kind of screwed up. There are several abilities which increase your spell damage output, and the only consistent thing about them is that they’re inconsistent. Here they are, listed according to the types of spells they affect, from most specific to most general:

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One specific spell in core rules

Cleric 1 (Death): Reaper (+1 target – Chill Touch: “When the cleric casts a necromancy cantrip that normally targets only one creature, the spell can instead target two creatures within range and within 5 feet of each other”)

Warlock 2: Agonizing Blast (+Cha damage – Eldritch Blast: “When you cast eldritch blast, add your Charisma modifier to the damage it deals on a hit”)

Cleric 8 (Knowledge, Light): Potent Spellcasting (+Wis damage – Sacred Flame: “you add your Wisdom modifier to the damage you deal with any cleric cantrip”)

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Single target spell from specific spell school, limited by level

Cleric 17 (Death): Improved Reaper (+1 target: “when the cleric casts a necromancy spell of 1st through 5th level that targets only one creature, the spell can instead target two creatures within range and within 5 feet of each other”)

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Spells from specific class list, limited by level

Wizard 14 (Evoker): Overchannel (max damage: “When you cast a wizard spell of 5th level or lower that deals damage, you can deal maximum damage with that spell”)

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Spells from specific class list & spell school

Wizard 10 (Evoker): Empowered Evocation (+Int damage: “you can add your Intelligence modifier to the damage roll of any wizard evocation spell you cast”)

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Spells of specific damage type

Cleric 2 (Tempest): Channel Divinity: Destructive Wrath (max damage: “When you roll lightning or thunder damage, you can use your Channel Divinity to deal maximum damage instead of rolling”)

Sorcerer 6 (Draconic): Elemental Affinity (+Cha damage: “when you cast a spell that deals damage of the type associated with your draconic ancestry, add your Charisma modifier to that damage”)

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Single target spells

Sorcerer 3: Twinned Spell (+1 target: “When you cast a spell that targets only one creature and doesn’t have a range of self, you can spend a number of sorcery points equal to the spell’s level to target a second creature in range with the same spell (1 sorcery point if the spell is a cantrip)”)

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Any spell with an attack roll

Rogue 3 (Assassin): Assassinate (auto-crit: “any hit you score against a creature that is surprised is a critical hit” [spells with attack rolls can crit])

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Any spell for which you roll damage

Sorcerer 3: Empowered Spell (reroll damage: “When you roll damage for a spell, you can spend 1 sorcery point to reroll a number of the damage dice up to your Charisma modifier (minimum of one). You must use the new rolls”)

Sorcerer 18 (Wild Mage): Spell Bombardment (roll extra damage: “When you roll damage for a spell and roll the highest number possible on any of the dice, choose one o f those dice, roll it again and add that roll to the damage”)

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One of the biggest problems with these abilities is that some of them scale with an Ability Score, rather than character or class level. This adds an extra layer of difficulty for the developer in making sure that players can’t stack static spell damage bonuses provided by different classes with impunity. If you look at the list above and consult your PHB, you’ll quickly realize that none of the static bonuses do stack, except for Elemental Affinity and Empowered Evocation. These happen to be two of the most unclearly worded abilities in the game.

Consider Elemental Affinity and the ironically-named Potent Spellcasting. The wording seems simple enough. Essentially: when you cast a spell of a given type that deals damage, add your relevant ability modifier to that damage. Sacred Flame is single target only, so you just add your Wisdom bonus to the total. If you use Twinned Spell on it, twin the bonus, too. But what about Elemental Affinity, which almost by design adds onto many spells with AoE or multiple targets?

With a spell like Fireball, where all affected creatures are affected for an equal number of hit points (or half if they save), you can just add your Charisma modifier to the damage roll and say it affects everyone–done. But that’s not adding your Charisma modifier to the total spell damage. That’s adding your Charisma modifier, multiplied by the number of creatures affected, to the total damage… or once per creature.

Of course, Empowered Evocation is worded slightly differently. Instead of adding your Intelligence modifier to the spell damage, you add your Intelligence modifier to the spell’s damage roll. Does it make a difference? It probably was not intended to, but it is unnecessarily confusing. The most limited interpretation of the ability would require that all damage for a spell be rolled simultaneously and be considered a single roll. That way, even a leveled-up Magic Missile or Scorching Ray focused on a single target can’t stack that Int bonus repeatedly on itself. Which is probably how we got this:

But does that really make any kind of sense? Either your Magic Missiles ARE more damaging or they’re NOT. Where you’re pointing them shouldn’t make any difference. And if you want to talk about Scorching Ray, the stakes are doubled: Empowered Evocation and Elemental Affinity can both affect the rays, so if you’re adding your Int AND Cha bonuses to each ray or just to the total spell damage makes a HUGE difference… except of course the average damage of a 2nd Level triple dose of Scorching Rays with both bonuses does just one more damage, on average, than an Overchanneled Fire Bolt with both bonuses (which indisputably works going by RAW, despite Mr. Mearls’s tweets to the contrary). But let’s not get sidetracked.

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Allow Empowered Evocation and Elemental Affinity to Add Damage to Every Bolt or Ray of spells that can have either a single target or multiple targets, and otherwise qualify as spells that are affected. (As with other static damage modifiers, do not add these twice on a crit.) It’s the most internally consistent and it’s not much of a strain to read the rules that way, even as written. Far less of a strain than limiting the damage to once per target, at least–there’s literally no basis for this except the dev’s metaknowledge of his own style of play (e.g. whether he rolls dice together or separately and what that even means). Don’t be worried about the increased damage output. As we’ve seen with high damage melee builds, it’s going to be hard for any ranged character to keep up, even in the early rounds of combat.

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With such a mess to clean up in the wording (or actual effect) of spell damage bonuses, it’s easy to overlook the issues with one of the abilities that IS clearly worded–beyond a doubt–and seems to function exactly as intended. Agonizing Blast adds Charisma modifier damage to Eldritch Blast on each hit, and Eldritch Blast fires more beams and potentially lands more hits as your character levels up. The problem? This is meant to be the Warlock’s best, primary weapon in any fight. Yet any character pursuing nearly any class combination can enjoy the benefits with a high Charisma and just two levels in Warlock, total. As we all know, cantrip damage scales with total character level, regardless of class, and the devs were not about to put Eldritch Blast out of line with every other cantrip in the game. But the result is brokenness.

Compare with the Overchanneled Firebolt affected by Empowered Evocation. Even though the Evoker can boast significantly higher damage at Level 14 (Agonizing/Eldritch Blast catches up a bit by Level 17), it’s an all-or-nothing proposition: either the single bolt hits, or it doesn’t. Eldritch Blast at least has multiple chances to do some damage every time it’s fired, leading to much more reliable output.

But what’s the real difference between the abilities? Sure, Agonizing Blast triggers on each hit instead of affecting total spell damage or being limited by some questionable ruling that it only triggers once per target. The real problem, though, is the investment required. Agonizing Blast is the single ability that every Warlock ever should pick up at Level 2, even if it’s ‘just in case’ they manage to find some Charisma-boosting item at some point. Some player characters or enemies might invest in a Brooch of Shielding to lessen the barrage of force damage that a Warlock can dish out, but there’s only one creature in the entire 5E Monster Manual that has any special defense against force damage: the Helmed Horror. (And for some reason it’s not just resistant, it’s immune.) Now unless your campaign world has a Helmed Horror police force with an officer on every street corner, expect to face some serious questions as to why Level 2 Warlocks have not overrun the world yet. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution.

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Give Agonizing Blast a Level Requirement. This is not complicated. Many other Invocations have a level requirement, and this one should be no different, if only to work in a comparable fashion to, say, Empowered Evocation or Overchannel. Warlock 12 seems about right. That’s the same level requirement as Lifedrinker–this would reinforce the split between Warlocks who (strangely enough) use weapons to do damage and Warlocks who chose to use Eldritch Blast to do damage. Feel free to play around with the exact level requirement if you’re not comfortable with such a high cost. Warlock 9 or even Warlock 7 could also be reasonable, though very powerful. You might hear complaints that this requirement makes Warlocks exceedingly weak at lower levels, but it’s simply not the case. Love Eldritch Blast so much? Take Eldritch Spear and Repelling Blast to start blowing enemies away (literally) at long range. By higher levels, the extra damage will be more of an afterthought.

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TL;DR: Spell damage is an inconsistent mess, but you can straighten it out a little bit without waiting for the devs to come around. Reward large level investments with increased returns and restrict the most imbalanced abilities with increased requirements.

 

BECAUSE MATH

THE SPELL SLOT PROBLEM

 

This is a complicated one. (Understatement.) Previous editions of the game made an effort to allow players to pursue multiple career paths at once, combining the abilities of multiple classes with varying degrees of effectiveness. 2E had dual-classing for humans and multi-classing for non-humans; 3E, 3.5, and Pathfinder combined those two mechanics, simplifying for ease of use.

Then you have 5E. It’s not that there are no provisions for multi-classing, it’s that there seems to be a prevailing assumption that you’re not going to do it. And maybe that’s correct; a lot of the inter-class synergy that you might expect has instead been rolled into class specializations, while the inter-caster class synergy has been all but dropped. Look at a non-human Wizard/Cleric from 2E or a Mystic Theurge from 3.5. Their power level in Arcane and Divine spellcasting is lower compared to a single-classed divine or arcane caster, but their overall casting potential winds up being much more impressive at later levels, thanks to their wider range of spells known and their extra spell slots.

5E has nothing comparable. Spell slot progressions are essentially identical for all characters based on their effective caster level (obviously, Warlock levels are not part of that calculation). The devs stuck to their guns on the idea of casters using low-level at-will spells almost every round, and that’s not a bad thing. Unfortunately the compensatory loss of higher level spells, spell slots, and overall spell power feels like a bad trade.

But ok, fine. Getting a caster build just right in 5E is a challenge, and probably won’t automatically make you king of the universe. The real problem is the pernicious assumption in the PHB that you WON’T want to multi-class, and the corresponding lack of attention to the consistency of interactions between powers and abilities gained from different classes.

This is not limited to the fact that you can throw Rage Damage, Superiority Dice, Divine Smite, and Sneak Attack (to name a few) all onto the same hit with your weapon, yet you only get spells appropriate to your level in each individual class. It’s easy to miss, but the PHB is explicit about this:

• “If you have more than one spellcasting class, this table might give you spell slots of a level that is higher than the spells you know or can prepare. You can use those slots, but only to cast your lower-level spells.” (PHB p. 164)

The problem is, where weapon damage and damage enhancements start strong and tend to taper off as your character levels, lower level spells (except cantrips) are generally mediocre and compare unfavorably with higher level spells, even when boosted to a higher level spell slot.

For example, think your Level 6 Cure Wounds for 6d8+5 is nice? No thanks, I’ll take a Heal for 70 hit points and status restore, thank you. Even a Level 9 Scorching Ray with every ray critting does about 140 damage total. Meanwhile, you could be wiping out a legion of enemies to the tune of 140 damage each, with a single casting of Meteor Swarm covering more than 5000 square feet. (You can hypothetically boost the damage of Scorching Ray higher against a single target with the aforementioned ruling on Empowered Evocation and Elemental Affinity, but the point stands.)

And it’s not as if this policy of zero interaction between classes for spell acquisition makes sense in light of how other caster class abilities interact. The PHB very clearly states that you can use any spell slot that you receive (yes, even a Warlock’s) to cast any spell you know, if the slot is high enough level:

• “If you have both the Spellcasting class feature and the Pact Magic class feature from the warlock class, you can use the spell slots you gain from the Pact Magic feature to cast spells you know or have prepared from classes with the Spellcasting class feature, and you can use the spell slots you gain from the Spellcasting class feature to cast warlock spells you know.” (PHB p.164)

You can also use Sorcerer Metamagic on spells that are not from the Sorcerer list, you can burn your spell slots beyond those you got just from Sorcerer to recover sorcery points, and both of the main devs (not just Mr. Mearls) have stated that the restriction on using only Paladin spell slots to fuel Divine Smite is simply a typo.

So what gives? At some point in the process, the devs probably realized that letting players acquire spells based on their highest combined spell slots was too powerful. If a player was willing to forgo the cool abilities they got from higher levels in any one class, they could potentially know and prepare an insane number of spells for everyday use, and undo all the hard work the devs had put into making individual spell lists seem special and unique. After all, why just be a Wizard when you could be a Wizard / Bard / Cleric / Druid / Paladin / Sorcerer? Max out your Wisdom & Charisma and slap on that Headband of Intellect, and you would be good to go.

Unfortunately, the devs also made the executive decision that players should not be troubled to make even mildly difficult calculations beyond adding dice together and subtracting hit points. This makes a middleground between fully stacking spell acquisition and non-stacking spell acquisition all but impossible. It also brings us to our first so-obvious-it’s-painful fix for spells & spell slots.

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Calculate Effective Caster Level for Paladin, Rangers, Eldritch Knights, and Arcane Tricksters Using Their ACTUAL Spell Slot Progression. According to the PHB, that’s half your Paladin or Ranger level, rounded down, or one third your Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster level, rounded down. THIS IS WRONG. If you take a look at the spell slot tables for those classes & specializations, compare with a full caster progression, and you are familiar with The Algebra, you will quickly recognize that the actual formulae should be:

Effective caster level (X + 1)/2, where X is your Paladin or Ranger level.

&

Effective caster level (Y + 2)/3, where Y is your Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster level.

Use these formulae, and use them well. Round down total effective caster level, but only AFTER adding together the fractions from the above formulae. Otherwise, you’re cheating your Paladin, Eldritch Knight, and Arcane Trickster characters out of their hard-earned spell slots as soon as they multi-class, and that’s simply unfair. Rangers probably have that kind of harsh treatment coming, but maybe even they deserve a break.

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Once you recognize the likely possibility that the devs simply did not trust players to Do Math Good, fixing spell acquisition becomes more a question of How? than of Why? Fortunately, there is a mathematically simple and fairly balanced fix that would allow players, at most, to get the highest level spells from only two class spell lists. Basically, keep the combined caster spell slot progression offered by the PHB, but then…

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Restrict Spell Acquisition Level by Highest Level Spell Slots & Individual Class Effective Caster Level. Or, more clearly stated: spells known/prepared can be of no higher level than you have spell slots for (as normal, but including multi-classed slots) AND the spells known/prepared can be of no higher level than your caster level in that class. This applies to ALL classes, including Warlocks. Some examples:

Maxed out spell level in 2 classes

• Wizard 9 / Cleric 9: Wizard spells of up to 9th level, Cleric spells of up to 9th level.

Class level as limiting factor

• Wizard 18 / Cleric 1: Wizard spells of up to 9th level, Cleric spells of up to 1st level.
• Wizard 18 / Cleric 2: Wizard spells of up to 9th level, Cleric spells of up to 2nd level.
• Wizard 6 / Eldritch Knight 13: Wizard spells of up to 6th level, Eldritch Knight spells of up to 5th level.

Spell slots as limiting factor

• Paladin 9 / Warlock 6: Paladin spells of up to 3rd level, Warlock spells of up to 3rd level.

Class spell list as limiting factor

• Paladin 11 / Sorcerer 7: Paladin spells of up to 5th level, Sorcerer spells of up to 7th level.

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Congratulations, if you implement this rule you’ve effectively re-incentivized sophisticated casting over mindless hacking and slashing. It won’t stop players from investing heavily in a single class’s casting–Level 18 Wizards and Level 14 Sorcerers still have significant advantages over their Level 10 counterparts–but it also won’t unduly discriminate against players who don’t go all the way in a single caster class.

TL;DR: Allow some stacking of spell acquisition without going overboard if you want to reward player experimentation and creativity with multi-classed caster builds. Make sure you’re not punishing partial-progression casters just because the PHB uses some stupidly bad math.

Of course, there’s plenty of room to tweak the rules a little differently, and we’ll be offering more ideas for enhancing your D&D experience in the weeks and months to come. As always, questions, comments, suggestions, counterarguments, and general feedback are welcome and appreciated. Carry on, orcs!

Didn’t read the previous posts? Check out Limit Breaks Part 1 here and Part 2 here.