u/protencya

Yes, this is yet another evocation adept post. I wonder how many of these we need before people accept that this is a problem.

So AOE nova is pretty rare, but tempest domain has always been a fun pick to try to optimize around for AOE nova builds.

Back in 5e, we had builds that dipped into tempest domain for 2 levels but were mostly sorcerer. These builds transmuted fireballs from fire damage to thunder damage and maximized a 4th level fireball for 54 damage at level 7(sorcerer 5/cleric 2). These builds could do this once per short rest and couldnt really afford to take more cleric levels because they were charisma based(so they wanted more sorcerer levels) since there were no good ways of getting a wis based fireball(for that build). If you wanted to go cleric 6/sorcerer 5, you would become a one trick pony that did very little other than to go nova in turn 1.

Fast forward to early days of 5.5e, we had cleric subs at level 3, so this build got online even later, and level 7 was already late enough. Then we saw a new build, tempest 3/sea druid 5. This also came online at level 8 but it had a wisdom based lightning bolt. It was also fully wisdom based so as you level up either class, you would get spells like spirit guradians and conjure woodland beings which upcast fairly well too. This build could do 54 damage at level 8 with a 4th level fireball but it had an additional use of channel divinity thanks to the 5.5e cleric buffs and it could level cleric to level 6 to get even more channel divinities so you could go nova every combat. This build had the weakness of relying on the significantly worse AOE of lightning bolt and the more commonly resisted lightning damage. You also had only 2 4th level slots at level 8 as you cant create more like a sorcerer could.

And now in 2026, everbody has fireball. You get fireball, and I get fireball, and everybody gets fireball. Its like the old darkvision meme. So now, a level 4 tempest cleric/level 2 sorcerer can take the evocation adept feat(which gets them to 18 wisdom), and transmute their fireballs to thunder damage. Yes, in case you didnt know, multiclassed casters can use evocation adept to cast the spells that they have the slots for, even if they cant normally prepeare spells of that level. This build can add 2d8 hit die to the damage of their thunderballs(which also get maximized with the rest of the dice) and deal 64 damage at level 6. This character can do this 3 times with a single short rest, only the final one will be 60 damage as you will be left with sorcerer hit dice.

This build is fully wisdom based, so you can comfortably level up cleric to get more d8 hit dice, more wisdom based high level spells, and more channel divinity uses. It doesnt have the weaknesses of either the sea druid or the old sorcerer build. You get wall of force at level 9, which neither used to get. From a standard optimization lens, you get armor from cleric and the shield and absorb elements spells from the sorcerer levels. At some point you can take the 3rd sorcerer level for a usefull subclass like wild magic and also get second level spells like misty step, blur, mirror image, etc. that are not reliant on charisma and clerics lack.

Im not gonna provide a full build, this is the core and you can take it various ways from here. The 64 damage 6th level is obviously a very high peak, the damage gets comparatively less impressive as you level up. Even then the build stays solid because evocation adept allows you not to be one dimensional. Let me know what you think.

If you already know about this, you might be thinking what is the point of the post. But I believe this will benefit some people at least.

The rule that a lot of people think of when this conversation comes up, is the spellcasting rule and only applies to spells. If you think I must be somehow mistaken, go ahead and try to find a general rule that disallows stacking. It is nothing but a mandella effect.

Let me start sharing some examples, getting crazier as we go.

The 10 ft slow from the frosts chill of a frost ancestry goliath stacks with itself. A level 17 fighter can action surge and use frosts chill 6 times to reduce their targets speed by 60 feat.

Speed halving from stunning strike stacks with itself. For this one we need 4 monks. So you know how solars have a crazy 150 ft fly speed? Assuming the solar makes all their saves; first monk reduces its speed to 75ft, second reduces it to 35(because you round down), third reduces it to 15 and the 4th reduces it to 5 ft. So a full party of monks can cripple every monster in the monster manual to 5ft speed(if it has less than 40 ft originally, they can even reduce it to 0) with no failed saves needed.

The new fey tormentors faerie time warp stacks with itself. This was actually my motivation to make the post. If you dont know, the faeire time warp imposes a wis save and on a fail reduces targets AC by 2. With enough player characters, you can reduce the targets AC to negatives. You can make a commoner with 5 levels of exhaustion hit their target with a natural 2, which would be a -6 total btw.

For the finale I have a fun one. We all know about the bladesingers who shapeshift into mariliths so they can make a bunch of attacks right? But the reaction defense of mariliths only last for one attack. Well if the bladesinger has the defensive duelist feat, they can use defensive duelist to add +6 to their ac until the start of their turn, and this also stacks with itself. So you can keep using defensive duellist in every enemies turn to infinitely increase your AC.

EDIT: this doesnt work with shapechange because you dont reatain feats. You need to magic jar a marilith if you want to do this, which is much less interesting but technically possible.

And I am sure there are other fun interractions, like the penalty from cold caster can stack if there are multiple users. Let me know what are some others that I missed.

It seems to be this cool spell that allows you to disappear and leave a clone behind so the enemies you are fighting keep hitting it and only realize you are gone at least a few seconds after.

Except that mislead makes you invisible, which doesnt prevent enemies from percieving where you are. They just see an invisible creature start moving from the space of their enemy they were just fighting. I suppose it can temporarily confuse some low intelligence enemies, but even thats gonna last at most one attack.

After seeing their slam go right through their enemy, even a zombie would switch targets to the invisible moving mass.

Here is the relevant text

As a Bonus Action, you can take the Disengage action, which also ends the Grappled condition on you.

The question is, what exactly ends the grappled condition? Is it

A) any disengage action

B) taking the disengage action as a bonus action

C) taking the disengage action with the bonus action that is provided by this boon

Here are some practical cases for how this could matter

As a monk your bonus action is more powerful than your action. If given the chance, you might want to use your action to disengage instead of your bonus action. Would that save you from a grapple?

As a monk you might want to use patient defense to take both the disengage and the dodge action(and some temps), but that is not the bonus action described in the feat. So does it save you from the grapple?

I think any sensible dm will allow all of this, especially considering how weak the boon is. But I figured it was worth sharing how unnecessarily ambiguous the RAW wording is.

People will accuse me of overthinking but hear me out first and you will see how one can naturally reach the conclusions I have. I will make 2 (or 3 depending on how you count) main arguments and some questions following each.

Here are the necessary information:

>2024 Command-Flee. The target spends its turn moving away from you by the fastest available means.

>2014 Command: The spell has no effect... if your command is directly harmful to it

(this text was removed in the 2024 version, so it is safe to say directly harmful commands are allowed)

>Sage advice compendium: You can’t move farther than 30 feet away from the caster of Compelled Duel by any means, including teleportation.

>2024 Compelled Duel: it can't willingly move to a space that is more than 30 feet away from you

Also if you want community's opinion about movement and teleportation, here is a post I made a while back.

So from seeing all this, I conclude that when the word ''move'' is used in the natural language of dnd, it refers to teleportation as well as the normal movement of the creature. Thereby, I conclude that if a creature under the effects of command-flee has a way of teleportation that is faster than the dash action, the creature is forced to use it regardless of how valuable of a resource that teleportation was(the spell doesnt care about resource expenditure, it just says by the fastest means).

Question: If a level 7 wizard who has their 4th level slot and dimension door prepeared, gets hit by command-flee. Do they have to use their only 4th level slot to teleport 500 ft away from the fight, effectively being out of the rest of the combat and wasting their most powerful resource? (assuming they have no faster means of travel)

Question: If a level 13 wizard who has their 7th level slot and teleport prepeared, gets hit by command-flee. Do they have to teleport to the other side of the planet, with possibly no way of coming back before taking a long rest.

Bonus question: Does planar travel count as moving away? Is travelling to a different plane of existence faster than moving 30 ft in the same time interval? If you think yes, here is the question: Does a 13th level wizard with plane shift have to travel to another plane? And what if the only tuning fork they have for the spell is tied to the negative energy plane, do they have to go to the negative energy plane and probably kill themselves?

Feeling good about your answers? Lets move on to the second argument.

Now we question, what does it mean to move away by the fastest means? Do we care about the trajectory of your movement or only the end point? If a creature could potentially end their turn further away from the caster, but they had to move towards the caster at some point in their movement, should they do so?

Lets look at some questions to better understand.

Question: lets say we are in a 15 ft by 25 ft room. On one of the (15 ft)walls is the door that opens outside, next to the opposite (15ft)wall stands our target. Now lets imagine we are at the middle of the room and cast command-flee on our target. The target is currently 10 ft away, but they can end their turn 45 ft away if they go out the door (assuming 30 ft movement and dash). However, they would have to get closer to us first if they want to reach the door.

Notice that unlike other similar effects, like the fear spell, command-flee doesnt cause the target to be frightened. In fact there is no text prohibiting moving towards the caster. Thereby I conclude that when calculating ''fastest possible means away from you'' we considder the end points of the possible routes of movement. Commanded creature should aim to maximise the distance between themselves and the caster at the end of its movement.

Question: If there is a 500ft long cliff and our target is right on the edge, should they jump off the cliff? I would normally ask ''does falling count as moving?'' but if we care only about the end point of their movement, that actually doesnt even matter. I should note that even if you think looking at the end point isnt enough and the path matters, If you will agree that falling counts as movement (not too weird since teleportation is also movement), then you should still agree that target has to jump off the cliff.

Bonus Question: Notice that in the last example where the caster and the target stands doesnt even matter (assuming the target can reach the edge). If we stand next to the cliff edge, and our target(with 30 ft speed) stands 50 ft away from the edge, should they still run towards us and jump off the edge? That way they could end their turn 500 ft below you rather than the alternative 110 ft away from you (with 30 ft movement and dash).

Thank you for taking your time to read it. All my arguments are made in good faith. If you think any of this is obviously false, understand that it's not so obvious and some people could genuinely interpret it differently.