u/SethTheFrank

Hi!

I am building a mystic arts monk. rogue 1/monk x, warforged, Genie touched background gives the magic initiate for blade ward and mind sliver.

So here is where I am stuck on the horns of a dilemma. Rogue 1 is primarily for skills and story reasons. But it opens the door for dual wielding and the nick property for an extra attack without sacrificing bonus actions.

The problem: if I want to dual wield, I need warcaster, or else I cant use spells with somatic components (shield, jump, thunderwave, and mirror image spring to mind).

Warcaster at level 4 gets me advantage on concentration to keep blade ward up and I can dual wield while casting. But Magic Connoisseur (mirror image and jump) gets me 2 free castings, and more spells in a class with minimal spell choices.

Is it worth it to dual wield?

A warlock with the Great Old One feature Psychic Spells (no verbal or somatic components for Warlock Enchantment Spells) , and a Pact of the Tome with Vicious Mockery or Mind Sliver can just damage people they see.

I love the idea of a warlock just giving you side eye so hard you take damage and have disadvantage on an attack.

I am not sure if there is any ambiguity in the language of the spell.

While it does say that the target can take the study action to try to escape, it does not otherwise limit the actions the target can take.

For example:

• Could the target cast Plane Shift (or use an equivalent natural ability) or Gate to escape?
• Can they use actions to do things like trigger damage? A number of spells, such as Spiritual Weapon, Bigby's Hand, Blade of Disaster, Flaming Sphere, let you take actions with them and do damage even if you aren't nearby and can't see a target. Its a logical stretch because how would they know what to make the spell do, but RAW none of these spells require the caster to see what they are attacking. Witchbolt is a bit easier to justify and also addresses the underlying question. What about things like the Steel Defender or Eldritch Cannon?
• Is there any other way for a creature banished to escape?

I would like feedback about whether this will be fun and challenging for my players.

The situation: the players are facing a boss battle. It will occur in a pit at the bottom of the ocean surrounded by Sahuagin. The pit is encircled by an anti life field that prevents spells entering it or leaving it, and only a small group of enemies can enter.

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They are a group of 5 9th level PCs. A cleric, a bladesinger wizard with a 2 level rogue dip, a bard, a barbarian, and a rogue 4/ ranger 5. They are pretty experienced with well built characters and lots of magic items.

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They have to cast the spell Hallow or Forbiddance while inside the enti-life field. A goddess named the Deep mother is helping them through their cleric, by enabling the others to help him shorten the casting time in this instance by depending resources in combat (basically aone time circle spell effect)

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The deep mother's gift allows them to:

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As a bonus action: Each turn a pc may sacrifice their highest available spell slot and 1 point from their con score. A non caster can sacrifice 2 points from their con score instead. They must then maintain concentration until the start of their next turn. For each round they do this, the casting time of hallow is halved. This must be done while within the anti life shell, as spells cannot pass through the barrier and they must remain within the . If their concentration is broken, they can recover the spell slot OR 1 con point but not both. The con score reduction lasts until they are targeted with the remove curse or greater restoration spell.

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The Cleric of the deep mother can exempt one 5th level spell slot (so he can retain one slot to cast the hallow spell)

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If they use Forbiddance (through divine intervention) the con score impacts and spell slot requirements will double (because forbiddance starts with a casting time of 10 minutes, not 24 hours). They don't have a 6th level spell slot so I would have to make allowances there. I may just say this means they have to use hallow.

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So, for Hallow it's 12 bonus actions to bring it down to 2 turns, or 11 for 4 turns, or 10 for 8 turns. For forbiddance They will get 1 round at the beginning of combat while the enemies enter during which they can either prepare for combat or do this once.

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It should take them 3-4 turns to do this, assuming that the attackers can break their concentration 3-5 times.

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I will also say that as they start casting the Hallow spell, some of its baseline effects begin to take effect and weaken the enemies.

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Also, if the hallow spell fails entirely, if they kill the big boss in the fight they also succeed.

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Looking for any feedback!

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