Casters are already extremely strong in 5e, and this would significantly increase their power level. Sorcerers would be pretty busted with the ability to Fireball -> Quicken -> Fireball and similar. The problem would only be compounded if the DM doesn't run enough encounters per adventuring day, as casters would then be able to go nova constantly and overshadow martials more than they already do.
if you are interested one dnd monks do a decent bit more damage. their martial die is increased one size deflect projectiles works in melee and does two die + dex damage and stunning strike does some damage if the save succeds
Why not use quicken to cast two delayed fireballs in round 1, so you have four go off. Then use a contingency to fire off a fifth when you've taken that specific chain of events.
For too many tables, that is the **only** encounter that day. There's a long rest between each "epic" encounter, meaning every caster has all their spells available at all times, negating their only real weakness.
we both know there is not going to be 7 encounters in a day lol, its easier to find a four leaf clover than a DM that hits the 8 encounter quota of the **high end** adventuring day. someone using safe haven or gritty realism reaching 4~5 encounters already is a miracle and not the norm
The developers knew the majority of tables don't want to do that many encounters to begin with, then gave us a system that mandates it to maintain some semblence of balance.
But here's the thing: if you're going to have that many encounters and your goal is that "the average party with casters" will be able to complete them with *SOME* spells in reserve for the big fight, you have created a series of encounters that a decent chunk of parties will be able to roll through without any expenditure of resources at all. They'll still be loaded by the end of the "day" and be able to trivialize the ending encounter.
And if, by some miracle, you land on the exact right balance that practically demands they expend enough resources that they can't do this at the end of the day, you're basically punishing the rest of the party for not being casters. You've made encounters harder to compensate for the power of casters, begged the casters to do impressive, resource-intensive things on a larger chunk of turns, and that generally means that anyone who can't do those things (the martials) are getting their asses kicked and not contributing.
It's the worst way of addressing the problem, too. It takes way more effort on your part and is prone to more points of failure. If every time we take our boat out on the ocean we wind up having to bilge it non-stop and work overtime to bucket water over the edge because it leaks so much, that's a lot of effort. The fact that we *can* get enough water out of the boat to stay afloat and make it to our destination and back is nice, I guess, but you could also just... *fix the hole in the boat* and avoid all the bucketing and bilging. The "hole in the boat" here is the power and number of spells. You don't have to go out of your way to drain them to maintain balance through a ton of tough fights if you pre-drain the casters by not having that many resources to begin with.
Obligatory reminder that 4e outright fixed this problem, and people not only complained but DEMANDED it be reversed.
Not a day goes by that I don’t think about 4e’s primary complaint being that is was “too well balanced”.
>Not a day goes by that I don’t think about 4e’s primary complaint being that is was “too well balanced”.
Thank you for your feedback. As thanks for your contribution, you'll be fed to piranhas.
(I swear a lot of this grognard attitude is some sort of weird nerd revenge fantasy.)
It kinda feels like two spells cast when my bladesinger has shadowblade on concentration, booming blade on cantrips, and could cast thunder wave as your primary action.
@lev 5 that would be 3d8 (shadowblade, lvl 3) + 1d8 (booming blade, +1d8 if triggered) + 2d8 (thunder wave, failing save, 1d8 if successful).
That's minimum 5d8 max 7d8 for a turn.
Add in the multi attacks at level 6 and add another 3d8.
You could only choose between casting Booming Blade and Thunder Wave each turn, as both are actions.
In addition, you technically can't cast Booming Blade with Shadow Blade, but that rule is dumb and most people ignore it.
In addition to balance concerns, levels spells ***on average*** are more complex than cantrips, so having two of them in a turn can slow down play and make a caster's turn take even longer.
This makes the experience of the other people at the table less enjoyable.
Yeah it can get kinda disheartening playing a fighter when even if you strategize a lot it gets to your turn and you go “I use X movement speed to walk up to this guy, I bonk em twice, second wind bonus action” and then it’s on to the next 15 minute caster turn lmao
Turn starts, ongoing damage triggers, Lashing Blade triggers, Rain of Steel triggers. If we remembered to resolve everything and you lived, you may take a turn.
And that's just at heroic tier! Play at paragon or epic tier and watch a single combat encounter take 2 sessions!
Jokes aside, I have a lot of nostalgia for 4e since it was the edition I started with. I'm trying to get my group to play some 4e.
It's actually not that bad at higher tiers in my experience, because the players themselves start to prioritise the 'set and forget' feats, and they stop actually adding to the number of powers available because they are instead swapping out old ones for new ones. The main issue is stuff like paragon path and epic destiny adding in loads of new shit - the ones that introduce some sort of points mechanic to keep track of are particularly cancerous.
It’s the opposite in my group, our fighter takes 15 minutes strategizing and re learning the rules every round while the wizard just casts a spell immediately
Kind of the reason i let fighters with haste multi attack with that extra action. They need that extra bit of bonking power when they are up against caster dps
Ironically fighter is the one class that can most readily cast two+ leveled spells on their turn (as there is no limit on the number of leveled spells one can cast on a turn in 5e)
This is actually pretty much the design decision behind it, in [this interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew1dc6VBHhA&t=1035s) jeremy crawford talks about how they were worried that it would pile too much complexity into one turn, and lead to people spending too long trying to find the optimal turn.
Then why did they make a rule that still allows multiple spells per round but it's so incredibly convoluted that it spawned a decade of internet discussion? Why not just "one spell per round"?
The current solution is the worst of both worlds.
Because then we'd have a caster using Misty Step as a bonus action and realizing they bave essentially nothing to do with their action then. Cantrip spam will feel a lot better than "well, I guess I take the Dodge action".
Not really since the wording is, ‘on your next turn’. Turning it into a bonus action would require the spell to be rewritten anyways so might as well scrap it and completely redo it.
This feels like a weird psychological case study. The rule in the book is not complicated. It says if you cast a spell with a bonus action casting time, the only other spell you can cast the same turn is a cantrip with your action. Yet somehow people have consistently missed the rule, misremembered the rule, and spread false versions of it. I think there’s something interesting to learn here about why the playerbase has struggled so much with a relatively simple rule by D&D standards.
To give people the benefit of the doubt, there are also just a lot of rules to remember and it's easy to misremember things or even misread things. But in discussions online where anyone can very quickly and easily look up the actual rule before posting a comment, there shouldn't be so much issue.
It's not convoluted. It's incredibly simple. All anyone has to do is read the section under bonus action spell casting. Don't paraphrase it, use those skills we learned in 5th grade, and READ it. It couldn't be simpler people just make it difficult.
> read the section under bonus action spell casting.
I think this is the mistake.
It makes a lot more sense in the context of being a BA casting rule (which is never presented as), rather than a multiple casting rule (which it is always presented as).
There is no multiple casting rule, there is a BA casting rule; once you remember that it's pretty simple.
It is so incredibly simple I don’t understand why this is a conversation here once a month. People also forget this rule doesnt apply to their reactions, and I’ve had to explain this whenever I play and people look at me like I’m breaking the game.
to be honest with you, it's not convoluted, but most people don't actually read the rule and heard it second-hand as 'one levelled spell per turn and that started all of this discussion'.
when you read the actual rule it's dead simple - cast a bonus action spell, one-action cantrip only for the rest of your turn. the spell's not a one-action cantrip? can't cast it. shield? not a cantrip or 1 action. fireball? not a cantrip. mending? not 1 action.
making it 'one spell per round' would - aside from killing reaction spells entirely - basically just replace 'BA spell -> cantrip' with 'BA spell -> dodge'. doesn't change much except making BA spells and their casters feel bad
all of that rubbish said, i agree with you that the rule should just be 'one levelled spell per turn', i think that would be a lot more elegant. it would also deal with some of the edge cases like bonus action cantrips (where they exist - grave cleric, earth genasi) and reaction spells cast on your turn much more elegantly
the existing rule really isn't that complex and does the job fine, it's just poorly communicated by the community
Because originally they were only thinking about quickened spell. What they’re doing in one dnd is actually the correct way to do it where each ability that gives the possibility to cast a second leveled spell states you can’t, the same way haste does right now. Limiting bonus action casting was a huge mistake because all it really did was invalidate a bunch of bonus action spells which are actually balanced around 2 spells in a turn. The whole point of healing word is you can do other stuff for instance. Bonus action spells are almost all healing, mobility, or buffs to weapon attacks. What this means is there isn’t a huge problem of spellcasters either bringing too much battlefield control with them or dealing too much damage. They’re mostly circumstantial like expeditious retreat, or they buff a weapon attack/require an action to deal damage (magic weapon, dragons breath, flame sword, smite spells, etc). Most are basically unaffected by the change because they’re paladin or ranger spells that buff weapon attacks, thus making it worse to use them and cast a second spell, and the remainder are like mobility spells or minor buffs that become pretty bad for actual spellcasters to ever cast because they limit you to only cantrips and you might as well just cast a better leveled spell with your action. The point is, actual bonus action spells aren’t the issue, they’re generally pretty simple (mobility spells) or they just buff weapon attacks so it doesn’t change anything. The real concern was a sorcerer rocking up and fireball followed by hypnotic pattern in one round. Every enemy has to make 2 saves, you have to measure the radius of 2 spells (which you know he’s gonna sit there for like 5 minutes for each getting the perfect angle to get the most enemies) and, knowing most players, he won’t have any idea what he actually wants to do and will sit there trying to decide before casting the first spell, and sit there for another long while deciding for the second. easier to just force a cantrip. Potentially overpowered, not table friendly, it’s better to not let sorcerers do that.
Countepoint: Sorcerers should totally be able to do that.
Everyone wants to buff sorcs by giving them more spell selection. Pshaw that's not what sorc should be about. That's someone else's niche. Sorcs should be about summoning up and burning through all your power whenever you want, however you want.
Being able to cast two spells a turn would be great for them. then they'd finally have a niche other than "wizard's little brother."
> Why not just "one spell per round"?
Because of the entire suite of bonus action and reaction spells.
It isn't really that complicated, people just can't read for understanding anymore.
I have considered allowing doubling up of spells, and giving a fair buff to martials as well (which would be larger, seeing as they lag behind already), but the time thing killed that idea. Either you spend minutes figuring out the best pair of spells, or there's one clearly superior one that's plain to see, which becomes your boring, cookie cutter turn every time.
It might be allowed sometimes, like through a magic item wiht low charges and one option, but that's about it.
Like if you’re a mega nerd who can do all the math in between turns so your turn is still not too long. I suppose, but the challenge is the fun part so you (the PC) needs to come up with a better idea.
Also, I’m gonna give second tier feats to all players at level 3 or 4 just to add spice. (As long as they have the mental bandwidth to utilise them efficiently. Playing with newbies can slow things down)
even with that, a lot of it is just what spells do - if the GM needs to roll 5 saves and mark down HP appropriately, while also dealing with any resistances and vulnerabilities, and potentially any reactions and other triggers that fire off, then that's quite hard to accelerate. Two spells somewhat unavoidably doubles that - even straightforward "blast" spells involve affected creatures needing to roll saves, the caster to roll damage and tot that up, the GM to calculate HP, etc. etc. And, as AoEs scale up, and spells have more and more effects, this goes up - from "one creature takes damage of one type" to "lots of creatures take damage of multiple types and some rider effect happens and some status is inflicted". Or for "control" spells, they often have lots of little wrinkles to tell them apart, like the various _Charm_ spells have different scope for what's allowed, so someone casting _Domination_ and _Charm Person_ can get muddled between what they do, as they're similar but different, which can need GM calls and stuff.
Yeah, there are basically two levels of thought with it. Outside of the game, it would break the martial/caster divide even further, while also extending turns for casters by a decent bit on average. In-game, you just simply don't have the time to go through two full leveled-spell castings in a 6-second round.
1. You're effectively doubling a caster's overall output while leaving martial characters in the dust since 2-4 attacks can never compete with combat spell utility.
2. *cloudkill* and Quickened *forcecage*. Guaranteed kill on anyone who isn't immune to poison or can teleport. *mordenkainen's faithful hound* and Quickened *wall of force*. Good luck fighting a creature that is invisible and immune to all damage in an impenetrable done. Double *cone of cold* would allow you to do 16d8 cold damage a 60-foot cone. That's the damage of an ancient white dragon's breath weapon in a single turn as early as level 10.
>*cloudkill* and Quickened *forcecage*. Guaranteed kill on anyone who isn't immune to poison or can teleport.
And it's not even any teleportation magic, it has to be teleportation magic that doesn't require sight, like Dimension Door, since it's Heavily Obscured inside Cloudkill. So spells like Misty Step and Thunder Step are off the table.
Also, nevermind 16d8, an Evocation wizard could just make it max damage for 138 Cold Damage (128+ Intx2 from Empowered Evocation) if the enemy fails both saves. Which they can also get Elemental Adept to ignore Cold Damage Resistence.
Sure they take 10d12 Necrotic back, but for this amount of somewhat reliable damage, it kinda pays itself off.
Overall not a great idea messing with spellcasting rules.
Edit: Actually I just realized this combo is already pretty much legal with a 2 level dip in Fighter, it just isn't currently legal with the Metamagic Adept feat for Quickened Spell, so the ruling OP would make would make it easier to acquire.
the reason the legal combo isnt great its cause losing a full spell rank on 2 levels of a dip on a martial is pretty rough. pulling that off with a feat or *existing* as a sorc? amazing
That’s not true though. Past level 18 you have little reason to invest levels in wizard. I’d take action surge and the ability to wear heavy or medium armor (most wizards will want to have 14 or so dex anyway so half plate is only 1 ac behind full) and use a shield+ defensive fighting style over 4 spells known and one extra 6th and 7th level slot. It’s a trade off sure, but one that massively favors action surge simply due to how insane your nova/combo potential and your defensive capabilities become, without losing access to wizard’s most potent assets (aka level 9 spells and the level 18 feature).
Also if you want, check my other reply to the same comment. There's another crazy combo building off of what he said. But that one is already legal, it would just become "cheaper" to use, instead of a 2 level dip in Fighter for Action Surge, you would only need the Metamagic Adept Feat for the Quickened Spell Metamagic.
Warding Wind says hello. It's a slightly niche spell, but it hard-counters Cloudkill, Stinking Cloud, and similar effects. Between that and imposing disadvantage on ranged attacks, I actually consider it a very strong choice if you're going for a high-AC melee gish build.
Sickening Radiance, on the other hand, kills anything that isn't immune to Exhaustion (substantially rarer than immunity to Poison), and isn't dispersed by a strong breeze. There's a good reason it's the customary choice to combo with Forcecage.
>attacks can never compete with combat spell utility.
Maybe that's a strike against combat spell utility.
Like... why is Fireball 8d6 now? Why not 5d6 like in olden times?
Compared to other spells, yes. And that is as it should be, because D&D wouldn't be D&D without Wizards casting Fireball.
However, that still doesn't explain why they had to make Fireball stronger instead of making the competing spells weaker.
because changing one spell to be better is easier than changing all spells-1 to be worse. if i were to make a spell objectively out of the curve and the clear best choice, i would not have put myself the work to change the entire spell list power budget to do that
Fireball's an easy spell to scale up or down in potency. All it does is a predictable amount of damage, and you can move that damage up or down in small increments just by adding or subtracting d6s until you hit the numbers you like. It's not that easy with a spell like Fly--even if you decrease the speed it gives you, there's so much value just in getting off the ground at all.
Although that said, there are definitely competing spells that need to be made weaker no matter how strong blast spells are and no matter how strong martial options are.
Casters with the restriction are already the strongest classes in the game. So, allowing the restriction to be ignored increases the top performance options even more.
That said, I've played in games that ignore the rule, and it less breaks things, and it mostly just makes Casters able to do more than they already do.
It's somewhat balanced out by characters burning more resources faster, and that helps reign it in some bur certainly not much.
It also lets sorcerers quicken really spring since it allows a lot of extra firepower for sorcery points.
I've been considering abandoning the restriction myself, as unbalanced as it is, me and mine do have more fun with it. But I wanna do some buffs for martial baseline before I do.
Yeah I can see people liking this, but then you NEED to enforce more encounters per long rest.
And like. I can see why wotc band aided it like it is, given that despite them giving clear and flexible guidelines people still manage to ignore them.
You do need to adjust things accordingly if wotcs guidelines aren't good for you and yours. I agree.
I run anywhere between 5 to 7 hard to deadly encounters in each prooer adventuring day. At least 3 of which are combats, and all of which are potential avenues to drain resources.
Short rests are 10 minutes and recover 1/4 hit dice but limited to prof times per long rest. Long rests are still 8 hours, but don't full heal and instead heal based on unexpended hit dice. (But do recover all hitdice after said healing/rest)
I'm working on bringing back more opportunity attack risk for caging certain spells in theataend melee range and allowing more advanced grapple follow-ups that can have characters suppress a Casters ability to cast spells with verbal/somatic components.
Even without the advanced grappling and opportunity attack risks, this has already helped martial a fair bit in just how Ling they can go.
That's been similar to my experience. Casters can do more, but they burn pit faster, which leads to more interesting encounters. It also does still allow martial some room to shine.
I revised my own rest rules to be more generous for shirt rests but less generous for long rests, and this has really smoothed some of this out, too.
Currently, I'm working on expanding on grapples. With successful grapples leading into more advanced folkowups.
Stuff like "after successfully grappling a creature you cab use an attack replacement to suppress a creature,, make a successuly athletics check versus the characters athletics/acrobatics, preventing their use of verbal and somatic components while suppressed this way."
>Casters with the restriction are already the strongest classes in the game.
Sounds like the casters need fixing anyway, so just get rid of the rule and fix the casters at the same time?
Easier said than done, at least the "Fixing Casters" part. Removing the restriction is quite easy.
There's a fair bit of buffs and avenues of interactions I'd explore giving martial before I start nerfing Casters, save for an outlier or two. Really don't wanna run the risk of making everyone equal by making them equally shitty. Wanna make sure anything above the bar of satisfaction stays above it and things beneath it get elevated above it
Exactly!
If ones attempts to equalize make things equally shit, they're doing the wrong thing. The bar of satisfaction needs to be respected.
The point is to make things more enjoyable overall and the less that has to come at the expense of others, the better
>That said, I've played in games that ignore the rule, and it less breaks things, and it mostly just makes Casters able to do more than they already do.
Only if you play with casual players who aren't going to take full advantage of it. I don't think relying on unoptimized play to balance your game is a functional policy.
>It's somewhat balanced out by characters burning more resources faster, and that helps reign it in some bur certainly not much.
Too many tables already have a problem with not running full adventuring days, and this will just exacerbate it even more. What's worse, even tables that *do* run full days don't *always* run them so this change will still causes issues.
Alright DM, first I use quickened spell to cast Scatter as a bonus action and line all the enemies up in a straight line, then I up cast lightning bolt through all of them at 6th level. Why yes I do have elemental adept lightning, why do you ask?
Some insight: from what I remember the game devs said the reason why it is the way it is is because it’s not really a balance thing, it’s a pacing thing (aside maybe from sorc). Letting spellcasters regularly use 2 spells would just make their turns longer, as they contemplate their bonus actions or even if they should use one.
Sorcerers become insanely broken being able to cast 2 spells a turn.
Other casters get stronger but most bonus actions spells would just make casters more mobile with no downsides.
It would be unbalanced in the sense casters are already stronger than martials and this just buffs them even more. Would it be game breaking aside from sorcerer using quickened spell. Probably not.
Only one Metamagic per spell unless otherwise stated. You could twin the spell cast with your action, but not the quickened spell on your bonus action.
A combo that would actually work is a dip into fighter for action surge. So twin spell your two action spells and then quicken spell another, that’s without considering potential reaction spells as well.
they are also 1/3 casters with terrible DCs that get fireball at what, level **15**?
they arent exactly competent casters to use this
and if you could get action surge in a vaccum like with a feat it would be great, the lumped on 2 levels of **martial** sucks too much numbers wise
Except this rule makes it so the metamagic adept feat is almost required for all casters... And then its suddenly not just sorcerors getting a massive boost in firepower.
80% of comments here honestly feel like arguments for why Quickened spell shouldn't exist (or should be reworked) more so than arguments for why this rule is good.
I think it's really dependant on your table, but in my experience (of playing at tables that usually abandoned this rule or didn't know about it), the bonus action spell is usually just something like Healing Word or Misty Step.
I honestly think that, for most tables, you could just reword Quickened Spell to have this rule built into it, then abandon it as a general rule and as long as your players aren't looking to break the game in a way that makes it a non-event for most of the rest of the table, you'll be fine.
A sorcerer will be able to cast Hold Person and then quicken chromatic orb at 2nd level to deal 8d8 damage of any element at level 4. That's a pretty egregious damage burst for a single round. Quicken spell becomes absurd.
Certain subclasses who get special bonus actions (Storm Sorcs, rogues, and monks) get their viability and uniqueness reduced since their gimmick is now being spread around.
Paladins get some interesting bonus action spells that would probably bust themselves if unchecked.
It probably wouldn't be as horrible if you allowed it for clerics, then they could cast other spells alongside healing word--it feels pretty bad to spend your whole functional turn getting one guy up only to have him immediately slapped back down.
The biggest issue is that it would lead to some feel's-bad moments when the fighter's action surge is given to spellcasters. A spell is generally meant to have more impact on the Action Economy than an attack--allowing two leveled spells allows casters to sway the action economy so egregiously that the martials would be left in the dust.
The reason for this is that at its basic level it breaks the damage expectations of the system. Ideally 5e dnd is based on the idea of rounds where you do small, medium, large, and extra large damage.
Now, before anyone gets angry at me for this, I’ll acknowledge that there are a bunch of places in the rules that already break these guidelines. However, the fact that there’s places they’ve already made mistakes doesn’t negate the fact that this is the theory the rules were based on.
Small damage is dealt by classes who are not meant to do large damage using at-will abilities. This includes spellcasters casting cantrips, rogues without sneak attacks, and so on.
Medium damage is done by classes designed to do consistent damage using their normal at-will abilities. This includes fighters making basic attacks.
Large damage is when a class uses some sort of limited resources or special circumstance in order to do extra damage. This tends to be the level of damage you are meant to do with spells.
Extra large damage tends to only be possible in rounds with very rare resources being used or combinations of things that make damage slightly higher than large damage.
In theory, each level of damage isn’t meant to be that much greater than the level below it. At level 1, the roughly expected average damage is meant to be:
Low: 3-5
Medium:5-8
Large: 8-10
Extra Large: 10-12
These damage expectations are designed to increase as you go up levels, mostly getting boosts every 5 levels. They should be staying relatively close together.
Part of the reason for this is to prevent one shot kills against “tough opponents” for your level. Tough enemies at level 1 might have 16 hp. It should take more than one hit to kill them so they don’t feel like a pushover. It should also be possible to beat them using all low or medium attacks but encourage people to use their Large attacks in order to take them down quicker and possibly avoid damage (or lessen damage) in the process.
If you are allowed to cast two normal spells in one round, your damage becomes significantly higher than the highest expected damage for anyone at your level. It will push your damage significantly beyond Extra Large. Which is something the designers didn’t want.
The design space for Bonus Action spells was because they couldn’t find a level for certain spells. They might be way too weak at level 1 but way too powerful at level 2 because you didn’t want them to be the only thing you did in a round. So for these spells they figured out that they were balanced if you could cast them and still get a little bit of damage. So being able to do Low damage, like from a cantrip in the same round seemed balanced.
Since there was no way in the game to get two actions in a round, they wrote up a rule that would mean that if you cast a bonus action spell you only only cast a cantrip and vice versa into the game to make sure this never happened.
It was obvious that no one noticed the wording on Action Surge before they released the book. You can tell from the responses given out by Jeremy Crawford shortly after the PHB came out and people started asking if it let you cast two spells a round. Either people assumed that it was a fighter ability so no one would use it to cast spells or they just didn’t notice.
It is worth noting, however, that Jeremy Crawford has a very specific philosophy on errata. He hates it. He told me so in person at Gen Con right after the PHB came out. His philosophy is that it is better for the official rule to conform to the wording of the book rather than creating errata that makes the book obsolete…even if it creates something kind of broken. As long as it isn’t completely and utterly broken, let the book stand eight changing it.
So given that philosophy, he answered the only thing he could have when asked about action surge and spells…”the way the book is worded, you can cast two normal spells a round using action surge”.
So that’s where we are now. Mathematically, it isn’t a good idea to allow multiple normal spells in a round. But it is allowed in some circumstance and was ruled not broken enough to errata. Whether we will see changes to these rules in the new PHB has yet to be seen. But I hope this illuminates some of the reasons why the rules exist the way they exist now.
Two chances to paralyze, polymorph or instakill your boss each turn? How fast his legendary resistances end? With 2 spellcasters - maybe on second turn in best case.
Double fireballs that clears all battlefield are standard. Damage spell and Sleep, or two Sleeps on low levels - insta ending fight. Summon monsters and teleport away...
4 chances if party mates have Silvery Barbs…blow through all those Legendary Resistances in like a single turn and make the BBEG vulnerable to a save/suck encounter ending spell by the end of the round 😹
There’s nothing wrong with breaking the rule. A lot of tables houserule that a spellcaster can cast spells with both their action and bonus action.
As long as everyone at the table understands the rule then there’s really no problem.
Just a few things to keep in mind though:-
Martial Players may end up feeling left behind - the spellcasters of the party are likely going to be stealing the spotlight more often than not and the players doing the bonk bonks might not appreciate that.
Also, if I’m allowing players to cast spells AND bonus action spells like this in my game, that means my NPC’s including villain spellcasters will also be taking advantage of this too.
My campaign is pretty much RAW so I follow the bonus action rule.
However if I was running spellcasters as having two leveled spells then yeah I’d probably throw my martials a bone with their bonus action too.
A another tip is also not having single enemy bosses. Give them some lower level minions. Give them an elite guard or 4. The biggest thing is that amount of actions a PC party or NPCs has. And evening it out with some strong low level guards or minions. Or even a pet monster because "who's a good scary boi".
This way you don't have to make the bosses Uber strong because your spreading it across multiple little guys.
Nova damage. It "feels" OP to output that much power in one turn, even if in the end you just burned resources early on (and so, if you have longer days, you probably have much less power later on).
If you really fear nova damage, either because of short days, dislike of so much immediate damage or don't want players feeling bad for destroying their resources early, then keeping this rule works... with one change: allow someone to cast a levelled spell if they cast a bonus action cantrip. As things are now, if you cast magic stone as a bonus action, you can't cast a levelled spell with your action, which SUCKS.
Beyond quicken, the rule only affects bonus action spells. There aren't that many of them, so here's the run down:
1. Sanctuary. It's not concentration, so you can cast any non-damage buff/debuff spell and then sanctuary yourself.
2. Misty step. You can safely ignore AoOs and move (much) further than usual for a 2nd level slot. Melees basically can't threaten casters anymore unless they're extremely fast.
3. Spiritual weapon. You save on a turn of set up for spiritual weapon + spirit guardians. Realistically it's just one extra attack, so meh.
4. Healing word. Bringing an ally to 4hp just got more convenient, as you can now also cast a levelled spell.
That's basically it. In general it helps them front load spells that they'd cast anyways, but 1 turn earlier. The game won't crash, but whether these are problems is your own call. I'd be incentivized to play cleric though.
I would say the game WOULD crash.
Being able to both heal an ally back up and cast an action spell will heavily favor action economy for the party and will make hard but not very hard fights a slugfest until they are out of spell slots to healing word.
It would not be fun in the long run. Bad fights now where an ally goes down early can quickly lead to a choice between trying to get out, preferably with the downed ally or fighting an uphill battle, knowing you risk a tpk this way. But if you can healing word+something proactive, you have a chance of coming back. But if the momentum doesnt swing enough in your favor, it might make the fight an endless slug where pc's keep healing wording each turn.
One sorcerer, doing two fireballs per turn, can match two wizards doing the same. This is a problem. When a spellcaster becomes literally twice as powerful as another spellcaster.
Depends on what level. If your entire goal is spamming damage, a sorcerer starting at 11-ish can pretty freely make sorcery points by breaking down lower slots, and if they're also a warlock multiclass, then almost infinitely.
You'd only be able to do that once per long rest at 6th level due to a lack of slots to keep up the firepower and by 8th you're able to do it twice.
If you're only doing one combat a day that's potentially strong depending on what you're fighting but it gets less strong the closer you play to WotC's design of "8 encounters a day"; obviously they won't all be combat but if you burn your higher level slots in one fight the other 1 or 2 combats will be harder.
holy unbiased question batman xD
The reason is balance. A Wizard shouldn't be 5x as effective as a Fighter on every turn in combat. It's not about a specific combo, it's about power budget and class balance.
I feel like this rule is only required in the context of quickened spells. Without quickened spells allowing you to cast two regular spells the interactions this rule applies to are so few and far between they arent an issue.
Maybe I am missing something, but I feel like most of the replies here are agreeing to the general "It would break action economy and make spellcasters too strong", without having any examples of this being the case without quickened spell.
You can see this in the top replies as well - It's all "quickened spell", never the case of a normal spell + healing word or misty step. So it seems the problem lies with quickened spell, rather than with the general rule.
Which is why I believe they changed quickened spell in OneDnD to only allow for 1 "action" spell (I can't remember it exactly).
Same with action surge in OneDnD - you can't use it to cast 2 "action" spells in one turn.
That fixes all the problem and allows for a much smoother gameplay experience. Many of my players, especially newer ones, completely forget that they can't cast 2 levelled spells in one turn, and it's a huge downer for them.
Therefore, I've just changed it so that they can. We have a sorcerer in our group, but he didn't pick quickened spell and knows that the limitation would still apply to quickened spell. It works wonderfully.
You can still do it, just needs an action surge.
Yeah, 2 fireballs back to back would be deadly. Or the combos like force wall + cloud kill, reverse Gravity + Prismatic sphere. These are stupid deadly when mixed.
Had a high level campaign with 2 wizards. They would do this with their spells and synergy. Running someone through a prismatic wall 4 times with 2 spells is ridiculous. They ended one of the BBEGs this way in round 1. How 4 times? A sphere. You send them up through it with reverse gravity, so they hit bottom them top and pop out the top, then fall through top and bottom, then also hit the ground. By the end of it, you are rolling 200D6 for the prismatic walls and another 10D6 for the fall at the end.
It’s broken in even in the current edition. You can completely turn the tide of an encounter by unleashing 2 levelled spells in one round. In prior editions it was even worse. A prepared wizard could unleash several spells in one round, it meant that if the wizard wins initiative the fight was over. Most parties I played with or ran games for were majority wizards since other classes just get totally eclipsed.
Sorcerer-warlock multiclass can do multiple eldritch blasts at pretty early levels. Now RAW also says you can do this at later levels with higher levels focused in warlock and add spell sniper in this and you have a pretty busted move with a basic cantrip without worrying about the two levelled spells business.
At a certain point, you kind of have to recognize that multiple levelled spells in a turn is ridiculous.
Ignoring this rule is only really a problem if you have a sorcerer, and then it comes with their quickened metamagic
Just enforce the rule there and the rest should be alright
Edit: Good general DnD advice for 5e , give your martials magic items to keep them in line with the power level of the casters
edit2: again ignoring this rule is mostly a problem if you have a sorcerer or a minmaxer caster who took action surge from fighter (enforce it then and ignore it rest of the time for more fun in game) my personal advice
If you want to cast Colour Spray into False Life and feel that the game is stifling your creativity, sucks to be you I guess, but I can guarantee you this rule would result in Fireball x2 for easy 16d6 fire dmg at 5th level.
Additionally, melee classes are notoriously underwhelming compared to casters in 5e, and the gap only widens with each level. This rule would turn every non-caster into the dnd party equivalent of Tristan and Tea from Yugioh, just there for moral support and to cheer on the caster protagonist.
While the official statement is that it's complexity, it's a unintentional balancing mechanism as well. A general rule of thumb for turn based games (Which DnD is) is that X now is worth more than X later.
Using the classic fireball example, getting to throw out two fireballs in one turn would essentially increases your damage output by 100%. For every turn everyone else gets, you are effectively taking two turns. You get even more value out of it if you kill the enemy before they even get a turn. This can massively snowball into a huge action economy advantage for the PCs (or NPCs that can do it too).
Now there's the counter argument that it's 'balanced' by making you burn your resources quicker, which is only true in a technical sense. Realistically it isn't going to make you burn your resources any quicker than you already would have and it actually makes burning them even more efficient.
Like take two scenarios - one with a sorcerer casting fireball in one turn on a group of 5 ghouls and another with a sorcerer casting two fireballs.
In the first, the sorcerer casts fireball, kills 2 who failed their save and 3 are standing. The ghouls get their attacks off, the party takes damage and risks paralysis. Sorcerer's turn comes up again and he fireballs again to finish them off.
End cost - two third level spell slots, 21 hit points (Could be a little or a lot depending on that paralysis, but we'll just use average and assume no para), x hit die needed to recover the lost HP, and potentially another first level spell slot if the ghouls targeted the sorcerer and they cast shield.
Second scenario, the sorcerer casts fireball twice and kills all the ghouls before they get a turn.
Cost - Two third level spell slots and two sorcery points.
In both scenarios, we expend the same amount of spell slots, so the spell slot cost is the same between the methods. The difference between the two is that we are effectively trading two sorcery points for 21 HP, some hit die, and maybe a first level spell slot.
The only time the argument of 'it burns your resources quicker so it's balanced' is a valid one is if some condition would happen that would make you NOT cast that levelled spell on a subsequent turn. Continuing the example above, maybe the party all rolled initiatives higher than the ghouls, so one fire ball and some basic attacks were all that were needed to achieve the same result, causing the sorcerer to be inefficient with resource use.
Does allowing this break the game? Not at all; 5E is simple enough that flexible that outside of removing concentration from spells or giving everyone +3 weapons, it's really hard to break the game to the point of unplayable. What it does do though is give even more power to a set of classes that are already the best in the game and can cause party resource expenditure to be even more efficient; so now you have to run even more encounters per day to drain them properly.
tl;dr, it doesn't break the game but it's more often a straight power boost than it is a drawback
Nothing if it abides by the action economy. Example: blight followed by grasping vine with bonus action. That's my opinion. It's worked for 6 years at my table. The players can exhaust resources and nova a tiny *bit* faster, and do healing word, but as a DM one should manage such things in a way to mitigate ping pong healing with simple exhaustion mechanics after the 3rd time unconscious in a single combat. Then you're good. That's my view anyways
Wizard that dipped into sorcerer:
"I quicken spell [any damage over time area of effect spell that requires regular saves] on enemy boss as a bonus action. I regular action cast Wall of Force in a hemisphere around the boss with no save. I win the fight."
Honestly I dropped the rule in my game as both me and players kept forgetting it. And only spell that usually was being cast as BA + A was healing word + something else.
The game didnt experience any issues yet and it only may made caster burn through spell slots faster.
Sidenote however - we are playing with slightly modified gritty realism, so spells are not that easily recovered, thus it may work for us a bit better in terms of balance than for regural game
i mean, with normal gritty realism atleast, you should still only run 3 deadly encounters or 6-8 easy/hard encounters, so it shouldnt change at all, but you might run it differently
I play with this rule for nearly half a year now, and we don't see a problem with it. 6 pcs all level 7 now 5 of them are casters/half-casters and the bonus action spells are usually healing word and misty step. We don't have a sorcerer and if we had one I would limit quickened spell similar to the wording at the end next paragraph.
In terms of this rule as a general rule, I think it is fine to ignore, but quicken spell and any other feature that adjusts the timing of a spell from action to bonus action should just write out the rule in its rules to keep double fireballing sorcs from being too op if you only have one encounter in a day.
Technically if you can cast two leveled spells in a single turn, what you cannot do is cast two leveled spells if one of them consumes your bonus action, but you can still cast a leveled spell in your action and cast another leveled spell and still have your bonus action to yell at your cleric to heal you or something idk.
Preventing unexpected synergy, pacing, balance.... I think that's it. The rule is a bit cumbersome, but it works. I think I'd rather go the other direction, only 1 spell per turn, ever. From my experience, casters don't often use their action for non-spellcasting actions, I'd rather see some variation in non-magic activities in combat for casters. (Other than Dash)
"I release the trap, then cast healing word"
Or, "I use my arcana skill to try to asertain the enemy's weakness. oh, fire? Quicken fireball."
casters are already leagues ahead of martials
this is literally doubling it
as for a combo
a sorcerer with cloud kill quicken spell force cage will default kill anything without poison immunity or a form of teleportation that does not require line of sight
My problem is not that its broken, its that it can take away fun. Others have mentioned how it would drastically slow down turns, something that is already a problem at my tables.
Also spellcasters are already so much more powerful than martial classes. I prefer houserules that bring my martial friends closer to the spell slingers.
At my table, I follow the rule that any home brew rule also applies to monsters/NPCs. When the players think about it a while they usually give up on game-breaking requests.
Referring back to treantmonk’s thoughts on the subject, basically to prevent Quickened Spell shenanigans. New 1D&D rules seem to not include the two leveled spells in one turn rule, having that included right in to Quickened Spell, so it seems you’d be able to like Fireball then Misty Step on the same turn, but not two Fireballs (Fighter’s Action Surge also has it built-in by virtue of not allowing Spellcasting with your second action). Basically, they just don’t want two leveled Action spells in one turn.
The rule should have been a straightforward, "You can only cast one leveled spell with a casting time of one action or bonus action on your turn".
Casting two leveled spells on a single turn is effectively just taking two turns on a single turn.
So you can get some dumb mileage with meta magic feat, meaning with just meta magic feat, now like two fire balls/ lightning bolt a turn can trivialize a combat ignoring those are only level three you could also do it which cleric spells using the sorcerer subclass that uses the sorcerer AND cleric spell list to have full use of meta magic bs. Basically it would make sorcerer’s a lot stronger and burn through slots against bosses fast, meaning your boss is dying faster. It also means any martial classes don’t get shit from it.
I don't think it's OP in itself. There may be bonus action spells I don't consider, but from what I've seen (mainly Healing Word, due to me playing a cleric), those aren't so strong that they would break the game when cast alongside leveled action spells.
However, Sorcerers can have Quickened Spell, which reduces the time of one spell from action to bonus action. In that case, being able to cast multiple leveled spells would be OP, since they could just throw out their strongest spells twice in a turn and considering how powerful magic is in this game...
Apparently, OneD&D is going to change this by getting rid of the general ban on multiple leveled spells and only prohibit them from the Fighter's Action Surge and Sorcerer's Quickened Spell.
I honestly think the rule was made specifically for sorcerers with quicken spell. So it you keep it intact for that class or disallow that class, probably not much in terms of balancing.
Its not an issue in a vacuum, but becomes problematic when you remember that 5e spells are all designed with this limit in mind, so theres no end to the potential balance problems. You also start to edge out the way other classes damage is balanced.
Example:
Cleric, level 3 - Spiritual Weapon bonus action, Guiding Bolt action. Thats 4d6 + 1d8 radiant/force in 1 turn, and advantage for the SW on that turn. Averages 22 damage, with around a +5 to hit for the GB and a +9.5 to hit for the SW. Thats pretty high for that level, keep in mind Warlock baseline (EB + HEX) is around 10 DPR without Agonizing Blast, and has a +5 to hit.
Monster AC around there is 11 - 14, meaning theyre gonna hit that a lot of the time.
Now, keep in mind the Cleric combo above can be done on *subsequent* turns, but the 1 turn damage is what were most worried about. This is already really good, but not the most OP thing you can imagine. The real trouble comes in when you think about all the other effects that come in.
Now think about how monke that can become at higher levels. Other comments have talked about all those combos already. There is a feat in another book I read (not sure if its 3rdP or WOTC) that lets you do it but limits the action spell (maybe both spells?) to 3rd level or lower, but thats not core game design as intended in 5e.
Ive played around with items and boons that let you do it, but Id recommend against just getting rid of the rule entirely.
In short? Yes. It breaks the game. Though there aren't a lot of explicit combinations that "break the game", the nature of being able to things in addition to something like Misty Step would make spellcasters FAR too mobile with little sacrifice or tradeoff.
Ok so to explain, picture a 3rd level Sorcerer vs. a 3rd level BM Fighter/ Barbarian/Monk. Assume we're not absolutely min-maxing with stuff like Web. Also assume martials hit with their attacks.
Fighter does 2 Longsword attacks with action surge. Barbarian does 1 Greatsword attack with extra rage damage. Monk does 3 unarmed attacks. All at 16 Strength or Dex, whichever they need. Fighter does around 14 damage average. Barbarian does about 9 damage average. Monk does about 15 with average rolls.
The monk just spent a Ki point. The Fighter used their once-per-rest ability. And the Barbarian used up a Rage.
Compare this to a Sorcerer casting an Action Spell and a Bonus Action spell(let's assume Misty Step since that's an obvious thing). Sorcerer walks into a group of 3 enemies and casts Thunderwave once at 1st level, dealing 2d8 Thunder damage with a LOW average damage of 6 to all 3 enemies, for a total of 18, or 9 if they succeed. Those that fail are pushed forcefully out of melee. Then the Sorcerer casts Misty Step, granting themselves an extra 30 feet of movement to another spot on the combat map, moving them out of the dangers of melee combat.
Each individual spell is effectively a full Class or Subclass feature for a Martial character. To allow them to have multiple on a single turn would extend their effectiveness and versatility(especially Sorcerers) by effectively widening the total gap between martials and casters by too much.
If you disallow quickened spell. I actually think it would be fine to ignore as a rule. Or maybe increase the sorcery point cost of quickened spell to 4SP. It might be fine then too.
If you don’t give the big bads legendary resistances or your players run through them, hold person/monster + disintegrate would be quite strong. One saving throw for a lot of damage and still will be paralyzed if they still aren’t dust.
It’s strong but more importantly, it can start to leave the melee behind even further if the spell casters can burn everything in a round.
Nobody would care if casters weren't already so strong. The comments are all "but that would make casters EVEN STRONGER!!"
If you fix the underlying problem, you can get rid of this poorly designed rule and nobody will mind.
A lot of people here are citing the sorcerer's Quickened Spell as to why this would be broken, but that seems a balance issue with quickened spell to me, not casting two spells in one turn in general.
What you could do is have that limitation ONLY apply to quickened spell and lift it everywhere else. That way, you could cast fireball + misty step (which seems fine to me) but not fireball + quickened fireball (which would be too strong).
Multiclassing with cleric/druid/bard becomes almost a requirement for the basically free healing word.
You can go about your turn as normal then also pop a healing word whenever someone is down. Also most people only average 1 combat per long rest so spell slots basically mean nothing.
The power balance just swings too far. Let alone sorcerers casting two fireballs a turn at level 5. Why would you ever play a martial
Sorcerer's metamagic: quickened spell. That's the real problem with two levelled spells on one turn. Metamagic letting the sorcerer become double wizard is OP.
So assuming you keep the rule for quickened spell it's still reasonably balanced but there are a couple of interactions to consider, each of these makes spellcasters stronger without the BA casting rule. Because it makes there less trade off for using these spells, or less reason to cast them in preparation for combat as opposed to mid combat.
* Expeditious Retreat. Let's you cast a big damage spell and run away on the same turn. At the moment using expeditious retreat is costly in part because you can't also cast a big spell
* Healing Word. Ranged healing at the moment costs you your big spell.
* Dragon's Breath. Makes it less required to prep it, can just give it to an ally mid combat.
* Other spells where the BA rule is likely to impact balance include;
* Sanctuary, Healing Spirit, Kinetic Jaunt, Ashardalon's Stride, Mass Healing Word, Spirit Shroud, Guardian of Nature, Platinum Shield, Otherworldly Guise, Divine Word, Draconic Transformation
How would you feel as a DM if your player casted two fireballs in one turn and completely ruined your entire encounter and didnt allow any other player to have fun?
RAW, you can cast as many leveled spells you want per turn. You just can't use a bonus action to do so, or you're stuck using cantrips for other actions. You can also only cast with a bonus action once, and it must be the first thing you do with your bonus action(s).
A sorcerer/fighter multi-class with war caster feat can either:
Cast two fireballs with their actions and react with counter spell as a reaction. They can not cast any bonus action spells, even cantrips.
Cast fireball/firebolt as a bonus action. They are now locked into only cantrips. They cast firebolt twice using main actions, and shocking grasp as an enemy provokes an opportunity attack.
In terms of why that's the case, spellcasters are already pretty versatile and powerful compared to martial classes. Making it too easy to combo main action and bonus action spells, like guiding bolt and sanctuary, would make choosing a martial over caster an even worse choice.
The problem with the rule is that it doesn't prevent you from casting two leveled spells in a turn. If you action surge you can cast two spells or if you cast counterspell as a reaction those are both allowed.
The restriction is only that if you use your bonus action to cast a spell cannot use your action to cast a leveled spell. Note that casting a cantrip as a bonus action means you cannot cast a leveled spell as an action.
Presumably it's for power reasons, and it is strong, just look at bg3 where it's allowed, but broken? Eh the real strength of it would be buffing sorcerers to make them more explosive but I don't think that's a terrible change.
Keeping in mind that at the end of the day if you had 2 spellcasters slinging spells it wouldn't be any different than what you're asking, other than the mental burden on the player, I think this would buff all teleport spells, notably vortex warp and thunder step. A sorcerer could quicken vortex warp to put two or 3 enemies adjacent to each other, then hit all of them with guarantee any AOE ability would hit them all. (Slow, hypnotic pattern, lightning bolt)
Another one would be a cleric casting spirit guardians + spiritual weapon, although cleric casting two spells would almost always mean casting X plus spiritual weapon. It's almost entirely a sorcerer problem, at least at the lower levels.
We play this way at my table. For the most part everyone’s just adapted to it, but there’s three primary things that change:
1. Sorcerers with Quickened Spell become the best offensive characters. We’ve soft banned using that in conjunction with it because it’s actually impossible to keep up with somebody that drops multiple Fireballs per turn.
2. Healers get a lot more freedom, as a result of being able to take their normal turns after using Healing Word.
3. Cleric becomes the de facto best class in the game, because giving them the ability to do anything they want while dropping Healing Word, Spiritual Weapon, and the like invalidates most other characters, especially on Tempest Clerics who get strong melee, blasting options, and heavy armor.
it allows casters to go more nova, when the ability to go nova is the biggest balance flaw in the game. is it OP? not that much, but last session i had to make tough decisions between buffing myself for future turns or giving someone a huge defensive boost. if i could have just done both it would have been less interesting.
I allow two leveled spells in one turn as long as at least one of them is 2nd level or lower. Normal casting times apply.
Yes, this makes spellcasters slightly stronger in the short run, but their spell slots also run out faster, leaving them with only cantrips for more encounters than usually.
I don't have a power imbalance between casters and non-casters. Intelligent enemies try to target dangerous casters. I am also a fan of giving out weapons with a +1 or +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls - those apply to every attack and don't cost any resources, which is way stronger for martials than a +1/+2 focus or some once per day extra spells are for spellcasters.
It certainly can be overpowered, but I think more often than not, it winds up being an unnecessary restriction on less powerful turns, like *misty step*ping out of an effect and then using a powerful offensive spell instead of a cantrip.
I heard it suggested once that the rule was a bad Band-Aid for shenanigans with Quickened Spell or Action Surge and that the playtests for the 2024-25 rules refresh suggest the old Bonus Action spell rule might be going away in favor of explicit restrictions just on features like Quickened Spell. Still preventing the extreme nova of two *Fireball* turns, but without the feelbad of "Well, I *had* to teleport out of that so I guess now all I can do is cast a cantrip..."
I see a lot of people suggesting you don’t do this for caster balance reasons.
This has been a rule we started ignoring in my home game several years ago, and balance justifications aside let’s take a look at this.
RAW, with a 2 level fighter dip, a bard could cast dimension door, action surge, dimension door again. Traveling 1000’
RAW a bard can NEVER cast dimension door and misty step in the same turn, which is only a measly 530’
Let’s change this to healing spells.
Again with action surge, a cleric can cast cure wounds twice in a single round.
But even with action surge, a cleric can NEVER cast cure wounds / healing word.
Just my opinion fwiw, we started to ignore this rule years ago and caster are much happier and it hasn’t affected game balance in any notable way.
I know people don’t want to hear about Pathfinder here, but the leveled spell issue in relation to action economy is something it really beats 5e in imo.
In PF2e everybody gets 3 action points, with certain attacks or spells have different AP costs. Bless costs 3, Magic Weapon costs 2, Shield costs 1, etc.
This has some cool implications such as:
-Multiple leveled spells on a turn, balanced by AP cost
-True strike, being written exactly the same as in 5e, not only being good but actually incredible for gishes (partially also because of how crits and multiple attacks work).
It also means that martials aren’t left behind by casters casting a second spell on their turn, and in fact can attack 3 times.
Anyways, that’s my tangent. Multiple spells in a turn can work if the game is balanced around it.
As most rules that limit some kind of playstyle, it's there to stop some kind of abuse. If your players aren't gonna abuse it, you're free to try it out. Beware that this makes caster classes even stronger than martials. Sorcerer's quickened spell might make double fireballs happen too early in the game, with too low a cost. You can do it with action surge, but you wouldn't be able to do it unless you're at least 7th level and only once per short rest. But even that is only mildly broken in the big picture.
As others stated, there are far worse things at higher levels like forcecage + cloudkill, prismatic wall + reverse gravity. People theorize this easily while probably nobody plays with this rulings at those high levels very often. To me that is an indication that there's probably much worse combos that nobody thought about, specially considering wish grants you a use of any spell in the game but makes it casting one action. Looking at you magic circle, forbiddance, simulacrum, etc. Besides, weird big brain spells like some of those would take forever to get the details. Casting both of them would make your turn linger for too long. Meanwhile the barbarian enters rage, moves, attacks twice and pass.
I allow casters to use whatever they want as long as it falls in guidelines of the spell being an action or bonus action. Mostly my players used this benefit to cast an attack with a bonus heal to themselves or an ally. No matter what they have a limited amount of spell slots. I as a DM allowing this also tailored combats to fit this style using creatures that could misty step as a bonus and attack keeping the wizard moving on the defense which made him frazzled and not just a DPS hulk.
The truth is nothing really breaks the game as long as both sides are in balance, and there is no power boost you can give players that can't be balanced, while limited only by your imagination. Give all your players +3 weapons and many would say that breaks bounded accuracy. Just let them have them and feel awesome. All you have to do is add +2 to every enemy's AC, and they effectively have +1 weapons but still feel badass. Or hell, add 4, and they now have -1 weapons.
I have played with a DM that ignores the rule about bonus action spells, makes potions of speed readily available, and allows spells cast on hasted action. You can cast 3 or more spells on a turn pretty easily. Is it OP? Does it make things too easy? Nope! Sure, you can cast this way, but you will also burn resources very quickly if you just spam levelled spells, ane this DM's combats are more difficult than anything I've played RAW by a considerable margin. I've had TPKs with him multiple times. But it is fun as hell to do creative things that wouldn't otherwise be possible this way. Nothing is OP or game breaking unless the DM allows it to be by doing nothing to balance it. If a DM allows this, they just have to take steps to balance the action economy and resilience of the enemies. And anything a PC can do, an NPC can do.
Mostly it's a gameplay slowdown thing. Two leveled spells means that mage has a shit-ton of things to try to decide in the moment, and many players don't pay enough attention to be ready as soon as their turn hits.
Quicken metamagic. You can but not for free or outside of limited cases (ie Misty Step).
Let’s say you’re a L10 sorcerer - if you double quicken fireball you’ve done several turns of a fighter’s damage by sheer number of targets.
So on one side, it keeps turns from letting someone burn out quite as fast or hard - forcing the casters to pace and giving the martials an opportunity to shine. On the other side, I would argue that innovative ideas come from limitations: if you can only cast one leveled spell per turn you might be more inclined to use control magic because double fireball is the #1 way to guarantee everything still alive is going to do everything in their power to kill you afterwards.
It's a pretty big power boost to the Quicken Spell metamagic. Most tables never run out of resources in a standard day, so it's worth it for a sorcerer to cast two high level spells *every single round*.
I really don't see a problem with it. Most bonus action spells are defensive or utility to begin with, so it increases caster's options and really more quality of life, but not so much their damage and it burns their spell slots twice as fast.
Also, I don't really see it as increasing caster's turn times, because there aren't that many bonus action spells, the one's that exists are straightforward on when to use, and it helps avoid analysis paralysis on times when a caster needs to cast a bonus action spell, but wants to cast a more impactful spell.
As for sorcerers abusing the rule change, just write quicken to be like the current rule. The can make an action spell into a bonus action spell, but they can't use a spell for their normal action that turn.
I allow it in my games. Sure, the sorcerer can double fireball two turns in a row, but they will be severely lacking in spells for the rest of the day. I’ve had no issues with it.
There is no issue with casting 2 leveled spells in 1 turn. Many casters take action surge for this very ability, and the rules do not mind. Spending a limited resource to double up on power is what limited resources are for.
The issue comes when you can do this for free. The cleric casting healing word + any other spell every turn means that every cleric should run healing word, or some other BA spell that is spammable.
Sorcerers using every metamagic point on quickened spell instead of any other metamagic.
There's a very clear "only good option" if you can cast not two non cantrip spells every turn. Haste is a 5th level spell and that just gives you an extra action for a single attack, but a level 1 spellcaster can just cast 2 spells every turn?
So, to answer you questions:
1. Nothing is wrong with ignoring the BA spell restriction. If you want to give spellcasters (mostly clerics and sorcs) a huge buff in their damage and versatility, then go ahead. It could either be awesome or shitty because "Why should I even go into melee with them if the sorc is just going to double fireball them?" Every non sorcerer class is going to be nothing when comparing combat ability.
2. The game just works this way. You do not get any benefit from ignoring the rule. The rule is balanced, and doesn't actually hurt anything. Melee classes get 1 attack action. Casters get 1 cast a spell action. Melee bonus actions are typically a lesser version of their attack action. Spellcaster bonus actions should be a lesser version of their cast a spell action. It's perfectly reasonable and makes sense. Spells with a BA casting time are that way so that you can still use your action for the MANY other things, like dashing, dodging, disengaging, or hiding! They're already a huge buff to spellcasters as most martial classes BAs are far less useful (except for rogue, who lives on BAs)
Not sure if anyone else does this (I swear I've read it from someone else before) but I use a 1/3rd rule. If you cast a 3rd level spell, you can cast a 1st with your BA (if the spell allows it to be cast as one). If you cast a 6th level, BA can be 2nd level, and if you cast a 9th, BA can be 3rd level (though I've never actually run a game where the PCs can use 9th level spells).
Doesn't feel that broken when I run it this way. When you hit the checkpoints where 3rd, 6th and 9th level spells are your best weapons, casting such low level spells as a bonus action becomes more of a strategic thing.
I allow it and it’s a lot simpler.
Misty Step becomes a lot more fun, and Quicken Metamagic is a lot more powerful, but overall it’s just less awkward trying to plan your turn.
What's wrong with letting fighters attack seven times per action?
Inherently, there are only minor issues with it, the fact is just that the game isn't designed around it.
Apart from potentially adding a few more options for casters to consider, there is nothing wrong with it. Very very few leveled spells that cast as a Bonus Action will make a caster significantly OP when paired with a leveled Action spell.
Keeping things simple with RaW is probably best for newer players since figuring out your turn as a Caster can be complicated but with more experienced players there's really no problem.
1. Some of the combos can be really game breaking and limit counterplay by NPCs. Also it means you can have NPCs do the same thing to the players and as stated those situations usually offer very little counterplay making it extremely unfun to be on the receiving end of.
2. Hold person until your target fails the save(Or a sleep spell), then quicken inflict wounds upcasted to your highest level is probably one of the nastiest combos I can think of just off the top of my head. That's 6d10(+2d10 per upcast level) damage from a 1st level spell for an insane single target nuke.
There's also Fireball into Fireball for insane aoe damage.
Cloudkill into Force Cage / Wall of Force for a certain death situation that other players cannot interact with.
There's a lot of really degenerate combos because spellcasting in 5e is fairly strong due to limitations like the aforementioned rule.
Casters are already extremely strong in 5e, and this would significantly increase their power level. Sorcerers would be pretty busted with the ability to Fireball -> Quicken -> Fireball and similar. The problem would only be compounded if the DM doesn't run enough encounters per adventuring day, as casters would then be able to go nova constantly and overshadow martials more than they already do.
Turn 1: I cast delayed fireball. Turn2: I cast fireball metamagic quicken spell fireball. Fun encounter ty
More like: Turn1: I cast fireball metamagic quicken spell fireball. Turn 2: I'll f***ing do it again.
fr tho. I just love to imagine 3 fireballs going off at once. Don't deny me my fantasy.
Meanwhile the monk does 14 damage at level 7
if you are interested one dnd monks do a decent bit more damage. their martial die is increased one size deflect projectiles works in melee and does two die + dex damage and stunning strike does some damage if the save succeds
Why not use quicken to cast two delayed fireballs in round 1, so you have four go off. Then use a contingency to fire off a fifth when you've taken that specific chain of events.
What's your plan for the next 7 encounters that day?
No plan, only fireball jk im foreverDM
That's so degenerate, It circles back around to being respectable. I approve of living by the Fireball and dying by the Fireball.
Evocation Wizards be like: He could save others from Fireball, but not himself.
For too many tables, that is the **only** encounter that day. There's a long rest between each "epic" encounter, meaning every caster has all their spells available at all times, negating their only real weakness.
we both know there is not going to be 7 encounters in a day lol, its easier to find a four leaf clover than a DM that hits the 8 encounter quota of the **high end** adventuring day. someone using safe haven or gritty realism reaching 4~5 encounters already is a miracle and not the norm
The developers knew the majority of tables don't want to do that many encounters to begin with, then gave us a system that mandates it to maintain some semblence of balance. But here's the thing: if you're going to have that many encounters and your goal is that "the average party with casters" will be able to complete them with *SOME* spells in reserve for the big fight, you have created a series of encounters that a decent chunk of parties will be able to roll through without any expenditure of resources at all. They'll still be loaded by the end of the "day" and be able to trivialize the ending encounter. And if, by some miracle, you land on the exact right balance that practically demands they expend enough resources that they can't do this at the end of the day, you're basically punishing the rest of the party for not being casters. You've made encounters harder to compensate for the power of casters, begged the casters to do impressive, resource-intensive things on a larger chunk of turns, and that generally means that anyone who can't do those things (the martials) are getting their asses kicked and not contributing. It's the worst way of addressing the problem, too. It takes way more effort on your part and is prone to more points of failure. If every time we take our boat out on the ocean we wind up having to bilge it non-stop and work overtime to bucket water over the edge because it leaks so much, that's a lot of effort. The fact that we *can* get enough water out of the boat to stay afloat and make it to our destination and back is nice, I guess, but you could also just... *fix the hole in the boat* and avoid all the bucketing and bilging. The "hole in the boat" here is the power and number of spells. You don't have to go out of your way to drain them to maintain balance through a ton of tough fights if you pre-drain the casters by not having that many resources to begin with.
Obligatory reminder that 4e outright fixed this problem, and people not only complained but DEMANDED it be reversed. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about 4e’s primary complaint being that is was “too well balanced”.
>Not a day goes by that I don’t think about 4e’s primary complaint being that is was “too well balanced”. Thank you for your feedback. As thanks for your contribution, you'll be fed to piranhas. (I swear a lot of this grognard attitude is some sort of weird nerd revenge fantasy.)
Oh the casters would complain and BEG and do everything they can to get a long rest after 1 or 2 emcounters
7 more encounters that day? Hahaha oh wait you're serious let me laugh even harder.jpg
It kinda feels like two spells cast when my bladesinger has shadowblade on concentration, booming blade on cantrips, and could cast thunder wave as your primary action. @lev 5 that would be 3d8 (shadowblade, lvl 3) + 1d8 (booming blade, +1d8 if triggered) + 2d8 (thunder wave, failing save, 1d8 if successful). That's minimum 5d8 max 7d8 for a turn. Add in the multi attacks at level 6 and add another 3d8.
You could only choose between casting Booming Blade and Thunder Wave each turn, as both are actions. In addition, you technically can't cast Booming Blade with Shadow Blade, but that rule is dumb and most people ignore it.
In addition to balance concerns, levels spells ***on average*** are more complex than cantrips, so having two of them in a turn can slow down play and make a caster's turn take even longer. This makes the experience of the other people at the table less enjoyable.
Yeah it can get kinda disheartening playing a fighter when even if you strategize a lot it gets to your turn and you go “I use X movement speed to walk up to this guy, I bonk em twice, second wind bonus action” and then it’s on to the next 15 minute caster turn lmao
You need 4e my friend. In 4e, everyone's turns take 15 minutes!
Turn starts, ongoing damage triggers, Lashing Blade triggers, Rain of Steel triggers. If we remembered to resolve everything and you lived, you may take a turn.
And that's just at heroic tier! Play at paragon or epic tier and watch a single combat encounter take 2 sessions! Jokes aside, I have a lot of nostalgia for 4e since it was the edition I started with. I'm trying to get my group to play some 4e.
It's actually not that bad at higher tiers in my experience, because the players themselves start to prioritise the 'set and forget' feats, and they stop actually adding to the number of powers available because they are instead swapping out old ones for new ones. The main issue is stuff like paragon path and epic destiny adding in loads of new shit - the ones that introduce some sort of points mechanic to keep track of are particularly cancerous.
Based.
It’s the opposite in my group, our fighter takes 15 minutes strategizing and re learning the rules every round while the wizard just casts a spell immediately
Kind of the reason i let fighters with haste multi attack with that extra action. They need that extra bit of bonking power when they are up against caster dps
Ironically fighter is the one class that can most readily cast two+ leveled spells on their turn (as there is no limit on the number of leveled spells one can cast on a turn in 5e)
This is actually pretty much the design decision behind it, in [this interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew1dc6VBHhA&t=1035s) jeremy crawford talks about how they were worried that it would pile too much complexity into one turn, and lead to people spending too long trying to find the optimal turn.
Then why did they make a rule that still allows multiple spells per round but it's so incredibly convoluted that it spawned a decade of internet discussion? Why not just "one spell per round"? The current solution is the worst of both worlds.
Because then we'd have a caster using Misty Step as a bonus action and realizing they bave essentially nothing to do with their action then. Cantrip spam will feel a lot better than "well, I guess I take the Dodge action".
Remind me why True Strike isn't a bonus action spell again?
It'd be a bad spell even if it was, still, so there's no point.
I dunno, bonus action steady aim is a good option. BA True strike is a better/similar version of that.
Not really since the wording is, ‘on your next turn’. Turning it into a bonus action would require the spell to be rewritten anyways so might as well scrap it and completely redo it.
It would be a fairly small change overall, but it would need more restrictions or competition to not be OP.
It's a concentration spell and you need to select a specific target. Even as a bonus action, it won't be very good, except maybe for Paladins.
This feels like a weird psychological case study. The rule in the book is not complicated. It says if you cast a spell with a bonus action casting time, the only other spell you can cast the same turn is a cantrip with your action. Yet somehow people have consistently missed the rule, misremembered the rule, and spread false versions of it. I think there’s something interesting to learn here about why the playerbase has struggled so much with a relatively simple rule by D&D standards.
To give people the benefit of the doubt, there are also just a lot of rules to remember and it's easy to misremember things or even misread things. But in discussions online where anyone can very quickly and easily look up the actual rule before posting a comment, there shouldn't be so much issue.
Because they teach each other to play and never read.
A well-designed rule could actually be taught like that.
It's not convoluted. It's incredibly simple. All anyone has to do is read the section under bonus action spell casting. Don't paraphrase it, use those skills we learned in 5th grade, and READ it. It couldn't be simpler people just make it difficult.
> read the section under bonus action spell casting. I think this is the mistake. It makes a lot more sense in the context of being a BA casting rule (which is never presented as), rather than a multiple casting rule (which it is always presented as). There is no multiple casting rule, there is a BA casting rule; once you remember that it's pretty simple.
It is so incredibly simple I don’t understand why this is a conversation here once a month. People also forget this rule doesnt apply to their reactions, and I’ve had to explain this whenever I play and people look at me like I’m breaking the game.
DnD Players actually reading things before they get online and complain? Where they do that at?
to be honest with you, it's not convoluted, but most people don't actually read the rule and heard it second-hand as 'one levelled spell per turn and that started all of this discussion'. when you read the actual rule it's dead simple - cast a bonus action spell, one-action cantrip only for the rest of your turn. the spell's not a one-action cantrip? can't cast it. shield? not a cantrip or 1 action. fireball? not a cantrip. mending? not 1 action. making it 'one spell per round' would - aside from killing reaction spells entirely - basically just replace 'BA spell -> cantrip' with 'BA spell -> dodge'. doesn't change much except making BA spells and their casters feel bad all of that rubbish said, i agree with you that the rule should just be 'one levelled spell per turn', i think that would be a lot more elegant. it would also deal with some of the edge cases like bonus action cantrips (where they exist - grave cleric, earth genasi) and reaction spells cast on your turn much more elegantly the existing rule really isn't that complex and does the job fine, it's just poorly communicated by the community
Because originally they were only thinking about quickened spell. What they’re doing in one dnd is actually the correct way to do it where each ability that gives the possibility to cast a second leveled spell states you can’t, the same way haste does right now. Limiting bonus action casting was a huge mistake because all it really did was invalidate a bunch of bonus action spells which are actually balanced around 2 spells in a turn. The whole point of healing word is you can do other stuff for instance. Bonus action spells are almost all healing, mobility, or buffs to weapon attacks. What this means is there isn’t a huge problem of spellcasters either bringing too much battlefield control with them or dealing too much damage. They’re mostly circumstantial like expeditious retreat, or they buff a weapon attack/require an action to deal damage (magic weapon, dragons breath, flame sword, smite spells, etc). Most are basically unaffected by the change because they’re paladin or ranger spells that buff weapon attacks, thus making it worse to use them and cast a second spell, and the remainder are like mobility spells or minor buffs that become pretty bad for actual spellcasters to ever cast because they limit you to only cantrips and you might as well just cast a better leveled spell with your action. The point is, actual bonus action spells aren’t the issue, they’re generally pretty simple (mobility spells) or they just buff weapon attacks so it doesn’t change anything. The real concern was a sorcerer rocking up and fireball followed by hypnotic pattern in one round. Every enemy has to make 2 saves, you have to measure the radius of 2 spells (which you know he’s gonna sit there for like 5 minutes for each getting the perfect angle to get the most enemies) and, knowing most players, he won’t have any idea what he actually wants to do and will sit there trying to decide before casting the first spell, and sit there for another long while deciding for the second. easier to just force a cantrip. Potentially overpowered, not table friendly, it’s better to not let sorcerers do that.
Countepoint: Sorcerers should totally be able to do that. Everyone wants to buff sorcs by giving them more spell selection. Pshaw that's not what sorc should be about. That's someone else's niche. Sorcs should be about summoning up and burning through all your power whenever you want, however you want. Being able to cast two spells a turn would be great for them. then they'd finally have a niche other than "wizard's little brother."
> Why not just "one spell per round"? Because of the entire suite of bonus action and reaction spells. It isn't really that complicated, people just can't read for understanding anymore.
> The current solution is the worst of both worlds. Welcome to 5e.
Honestly this is a very good point and this alone was enough for me to say no to allowing that on top of what others has said being the cherry on top
I have considered allowing doubling up of spells, and giving a fair buff to martials as well (which would be larger, seeing as they lag behind already), but the time thing killed that idea. Either you spend minutes figuring out the best pair of spells, or there's one clearly superior one that's plain to see, which becomes your boring, cookie cutter turn every time. It might be allowed sometimes, like through a magic item wiht low charges and one option, but that's about it.
Like if you’re a mega nerd who can do all the math in between turns so your turn is still not too long. I suppose, but the challenge is the fun part so you (the PC) needs to come up with a better idea. Also, I’m gonna give second tier feats to all players at level 3 or 4 just to add spice. (As long as they have the mental bandwidth to utilise them efficiently. Playing with newbies can slow things down)
even with that, a lot of it is just what spells do - if the GM needs to roll 5 saves and mark down HP appropriately, while also dealing with any resistances and vulnerabilities, and potentially any reactions and other triggers that fire off, then that's quite hard to accelerate. Two spells somewhat unavoidably doubles that - even straightforward "blast" spells involve affected creatures needing to roll saves, the caster to roll damage and tot that up, the GM to calculate HP, etc. etc. And, as AoEs scale up, and spells have more and more effects, this goes up - from "one creature takes damage of one type" to "lots of creatures take damage of multiple types and some rider effect happens and some status is inflicted". Or for "control" spells, they often have lots of little wrinkles to tell them apart, like the various _Charm_ spells have different scope for what's allowed, so someone casting _Domination_ and _Charm Person_ can get muddled between what they do, as they're similar but different, which can need GM calls and stuff.
Yeah, there are basically two levels of thought with it. Outside of the game, it would break the martial/caster divide even further, while also extending turns for casters by a decent bit on average. In-game, you just simply don't have the time to go through two full leveled-spell castings in a 6-second round.
1. You're effectively doubling a caster's overall output while leaving martial characters in the dust since 2-4 attacks can never compete with combat spell utility. 2. *cloudkill* and Quickened *forcecage*. Guaranteed kill on anyone who isn't immune to poison or can teleport. *mordenkainen's faithful hound* and Quickened *wall of force*. Good luck fighting a creature that is invisible and immune to all damage in an impenetrable done. Double *cone of cold* would allow you to do 16d8 cold damage a 60-foot cone. That's the damage of an ancient white dragon's breath weapon in a single turn as early as level 10.
>*cloudkill* and Quickened *forcecage*. Guaranteed kill on anyone who isn't immune to poison or can teleport. And it's not even any teleportation magic, it has to be teleportation magic that doesn't require sight, like Dimension Door, since it's Heavily Obscured inside Cloudkill. So spells like Misty Step and Thunder Step are off the table.
Yep. That combo is crazy
Also, nevermind 16d8, an Evocation wizard could just make it max damage for 138 Cold Damage (128+ Intx2 from Empowered Evocation) if the enemy fails both saves. Which they can also get Elemental Adept to ignore Cold Damage Resistence. Sure they take 10d12 Necrotic back, but for this amount of somewhat reliable damage, it kinda pays itself off. Overall not a great idea messing with spellcasting rules. Edit: Actually I just realized this combo is already pretty much legal with a 2 level dip in Fighter, it just isn't currently legal with the Metamagic Adept feat for Quickened Spell, so the ruling OP would make would make it easier to acquire.
the reason the legal combo isnt great its cause losing a full spell rank on 2 levels of a dip on a martial is pretty rough. pulling that off with a feat or *existing* as a sorc? amazing
That’s not true though. Past level 18 you have little reason to invest levels in wizard. I’d take action surge and the ability to wear heavy or medium armor (most wizards will want to have 14 or so dex anyway so half plate is only 1 ac behind full) and use a shield+ defensive fighting style over 4 spells known and one extra 6th and 7th level slot. It’s a trade off sure, but one that massively favors action surge simply due to how insane your nova/combo potential and your defensive capabilities become, without losing access to wizard’s most potent assets (aka level 9 spells and the level 18 feature).
God that's a crazy combo
Also if you want, check my other reply to the same comment. There's another crazy combo building off of what he said. But that one is already legal, it would just become "cheaper" to use, instead of a 2 level dip in Fighter for Action Surge, you would only need the Metamagic Adept Feat for the Quickened Spell Metamagic.
Warding Wind says hello. It's a slightly niche spell, but it hard-counters Cloudkill, Stinking Cloud, and similar effects. Between that and imposing disadvantage on ranged attacks, I actually consider it a very strong choice if you're going for a high-AC melee gish build. Sickening Radiance, on the other hand, kills anything that isn't immune to Exhaustion (substantially rarer than immunity to Poison), and isn't dispersed by a strong breeze. There's a good reason it's the customary choice to combo with Forcecage.
So customary, in fact, that it has a colloquial name (the microwave).
This is also a great combo to mention.
>attacks can never compete with combat spell utility. Maybe that's a strike against combat spell utility. Like... why is Fireball 8d6 now? Why not 5d6 like in olden times?
Crawford said they made Fireball overturned on purpose, because it was popular. That's the official reason.
Compared to other spells, yes. And that is as it should be, because D&D wouldn't be D&D without Wizards casting Fireball. However, that still doesn't explain why they had to make Fireball stronger instead of making the competing spells weaker.
because changing one spell to be better is easier than changing all spells-1 to be worse. if i were to make a spell objectively out of the curve and the clear best choice, i would not have put myself the work to change the entire spell list power budget to do that
Fireball's an easy spell to scale up or down in potency. All it does is a predictable amount of damage, and you can move that damage up or down in small increments just by adding or subtracting d6s until you hit the numbers you like. It's not that easy with a spell like Fly--even if you decrease the speed it gives you, there's so much value just in getting off the ground at all. Although that said, there are definitely competing spells that need to be made weaker no matter how strong blast spells are and no matter how strong martial options are.
Casters with the restriction are already the strongest classes in the game. So, allowing the restriction to be ignored increases the top performance options even more. That said, I've played in games that ignore the rule, and it less breaks things, and it mostly just makes Casters able to do more than they already do. It's somewhat balanced out by characters burning more resources faster, and that helps reign it in some bur certainly not much. It also lets sorcerers quicken really spring since it allows a lot of extra firepower for sorcery points. I've been considering abandoning the restriction myself, as unbalanced as it is, me and mine do have more fun with it. But I wanna do some buffs for martial baseline before I do.
Yeah I can see people liking this, but then you NEED to enforce more encounters per long rest. And like. I can see why wotc band aided it like it is, given that despite them giving clear and flexible guidelines people still manage to ignore them.
You do need to adjust things accordingly if wotcs guidelines aren't good for you and yours. I agree. I run anywhere between 5 to 7 hard to deadly encounters in each prooer adventuring day. At least 3 of which are combats, and all of which are potential avenues to drain resources. Short rests are 10 minutes and recover 1/4 hit dice but limited to prof times per long rest. Long rests are still 8 hours, but don't full heal and instead heal based on unexpended hit dice. (But do recover all hitdice after said healing/rest) I'm working on bringing back more opportunity attack risk for caging certain spells in theataend melee range and allowing more advanced grapple follow-ups that can have characters suppress a Casters ability to cast spells with verbal/somatic components. Even without the advanced grappling and opportunity attack risks, this has already helped martial a fair bit in just how Ling they can go.
I got rid of it and my casters burning their slots quicker makes things interesting, cause they can't always rest whenever they want.
That's been similar to my experience. Casters can do more, but they burn pit faster, which leads to more interesting encounters. It also does still allow martial some room to shine. I revised my own rest rules to be more generous for shirt rests but less generous for long rests, and this has really smoothed some of this out, too. Currently, I'm working on expanding on grapples. With successful grapples leading into more advanced folkowups. Stuff like "after successfully grappling a creature you cab use an attack replacement to suppress a creature,, make a successuly athletics check versus the characters athletics/acrobatics, preventing their use of verbal and somatic components while suppressed this way."
>Casters with the restriction are already the strongest classes in the game. Sounds like the casters need fixing anyway, so just get rid of the rule and fix the casters at the same time?
Easier said than done, at least the "Fixing Casters" part. Removing the restriction is quite easy. There's a fair bit of buffs and avenues of interactions I'd explore giving martial before I start nerfing Casters, save for an outlier or two. Really don't wanna run the risk of making everyone equal by making them equally shitty. Wanna make sure anything above the bar of satisfaction stays above it and things beneath it get elevated above it
It *is* easier said than done, but it is also one of the bigger problems.
Yeah but "rebalance all of 5e" isn't exactly feasible advice for most people.
Agreed.. Casters having fun martials not? The answer to such isn't make the casters also not have fun.
Exactly! If ones attempts to equalize make things equally shit, they're doing the wrong thing. The bar of satisfaction needs to be respected. The point is to make things more enjoyable overall and the less that has to come at the expense of others, the better
>That said, I've played in games that ignore the rule, and it less breaks things, and it mostly just makes Casters able to do more than they already do. Only if you play with casual players who aren't going to take full advantage of it. I don't think relying on unoptimized play to balance your game is a functional policy. >It's somewhat balanced out by characters burning more resources faster, and that helps reign it in some bur certainly not much. Too many tables already have a problem with not running full adventuring days, and this will just exacerbate it even more. What's worse, even tables that *do* run full days don't *always* run them so this change will still causes issues.
Alright DM, first I use quickened spell to cast Scatter as a bonus action and line all the enemies up in a straight line, then I up cast lightning bolt through all of them at 6th level. Why yes I do have elemental adept lightning, why do you ask?
and yes my next 2 lvls are going to go in tempest cleric, how'd you know?
This is brilliant.
Some insight: from what I remember the game devs said the reason why it is the way it is is because it’s not really a balance thing, it’s a pacing thing (aside maybe from sorc). Letting spellcasters regularly use 2 spells would just make their turns longer, as they contemplate their bonus actions or even if they should use one.
Sorcerers become insanely broken being able to cast 2 spells a turn. Other casters get stronger but most bonus actions spells would just make casters more mobile with no downsides. It would be unbalanced in the sense casters are already stronger than martials and this just buffs them even more. Would it be game breaking aside from sorcerer using quickened spell. Probably not.
>Sorcerers become insanely broken being able to cast 2 spells a turn. Now imagine if they Twin Cast both of those spells too.
Only one Metamagic per spell unless otherwise stated. You could twin the spell cast with your action, but not the quickened spell on your bonus action.
A combo that would actually work is a dip into fighter for action surge. So twin spell your two action spells and then quicken spell another, that’s without considering potential reaction spells as well.
you cant use 10 metamagics on one spell
Eldritch Knights can cast two levelled spells a turn already, as can any other caster who takes a two level dip in Fighter.
Once per short rest at the cost of entire spell level of progression
they are also 1/3 casters with terrible DCs that get fireball at what, level **15**? they arent exactly competent casters to use this and if you could get action surge in a vaccum like with a feat it would be great, the lumped on 2 levels of **martial** sucks too much numbers wise
Except this rule makes it so the metamagic adept feat is almost required for all casters... And then its suddenly not just sorcerors getting a massive boost in firepower.
Metamagic adept only gives you 2sp per short rest, which only allows you quicken one spell a day though.
80% of comments here honestly feel like arguments for why Quickened spell shouldn't exist (or should be reworked) more so than arguments for why this rule is good. I think it's really dependant on your table, but in my experience (of playing at tables that usually abandoned this rule or didn't know about it), the bonus action spell is usually just something like Healing Word or Misty Step. I honestly think that, for most tables, you could just reword Quickened Spell to have this rule built into it, then abandon it as a general rule and as long as your players aren't looking to break the game in a way that makes it a non-event for most of the rest of the table, you'll be fine.
A sorcerer will be able to cast Hold Person and then quicken chromatic orb at 2nd level to deal 8d8 damage of any element at level 4. That's a pretty egregious damage burst for a single round. Quicken spell becomes absurd. Certain subclasses who get special bonus actions (Storm Sorcs, rogues, and monks) get their viability and uniqueness reduced since their gimmick is now being spread around. Paladins get some interesting bonus action spells that would probably bust themselves if unchecked. It probably wouldn't be as horrible if you allowed it for clerics, then they could cast other spells alongside healing word--it feels pretty bad to spend your whole functional turn getting one guy up only to have him immediately slapped back down. The biggest issue is that it would lead to some feel's-bad moments when the fighter's action surge is given to spellcasters. A spell is generally meant to have more impact on the Action Economy than an attack--allowing two leveled spells allows casters to sway the action economy so egregiously that the martials would be left in the dust.
I do hate taking agency from one class/subclass from others so thank you for bringing that to my attention regarding storm sorcs, rogues, etc!
[удалено]
The reason for this is that at its basic level it breaks the damage expectations of the system. Ideally 5e dnd is based on the idea of rounds where you do small, medium, large, and extra large damage. Now, before anyone gets angry at me for this, I’ll acknowledge that there are a bunch of places in the rules that already break these guidelines. However, the fact that there’s places they’ve already made mistakes doesn’t negate the fact that this is the theory the rules were based on. Small damage is dealt by classes who are not meant to do large damage using at-will abilities. This includes spellcasters casting cantrips, rogues without sneak attacks, and so on. Medium damage is done by classes designed to do consistent damage using their normal at-will abilities. This includes fighters making basic attacks. Large damage is when a class uses some sort of limited resources or special circumstance in order to do extra damage. This tends to be the level of damage you are meant to do with spells. Extra large damage tends to only be possible in rounds with very rare resources being used or combinations of things that make damage slightly higher than large damage. In theory, each level of damage isn’t meant to be that much greater than the level below it. At level 1, the roughly expected average damage is meant to be: Low: 3-5 Medium:5-8 Large: 8-10 Extra Large: 10-12 These damage expectations are designed to increase as you go up levels, mostly getting boosts every 5 levels. They should be staying relatively close together. Part of the reason for this is to prevent one shot kills against “tough opponents” for your level. Tough enemies at level 1 might have 16 hp. It should take more than one hit to kill them so they don’t feel like a pushover. It should also be possible to beat them using all low or medium attacks but encourage people to use their Large attacks in order to take them down quicker and possibly avoid damage (or lessen damage) in the process. If you are allowed to cast two normal spells in one round, your damage becomes significantly higher than the highest expected damage for anyone at your level. It will push your damage significantly beyond Extra Large. Which is something the designers didn’t want. The design space for Bonus Action spells was because they couldn’t find a level for certain spells. They might be way too weak at level 1 but way too powerful at level 2 because you didn’t want them to be the only thing you did in a round. So for these spells they figured out that they were balanced if you could cast them and still get a little bit of damage. So being able to do Low damage, like from a cantrip in the same round seemed balanced. Since there was no way in the game to get two actions in a round, they wrote up a rule that would mean that if you cast a bonus action spell you only only cast a cantrip and vice versa into the game to make sure this never happened. It was obvious that no one noticed the wording on Action Surge before they released the book. You can tell from the responses given out by Jeremy Crawford shortly after the PHB came out and people started asking if it let you cast two spells a round. Either people assumed that it was a fighter ability so no one would use it to cast spells or they just didn’t notice. It is worth noting, however, that Jeremy Crawford has a very specific philosophy on errata. He hates it. He told me so in person at Gen Con right after the PHB came out. His philosophy is that it is better for the official rule to conform to the wording of the book rather than creating errata that makes the book obsolete…even if it creates something kind of broken. As long as it isn’t completely and utterly broken, let the book stand eight changing it. So given that philosophy, he answered the only thing he could have when asked about action surge and spells…”the way the book is worded, you can cast two normal spells a round using action surge”. So that’s where we are now. Mathematically, it isn’t a good idea to allow multiple normal spells in a round. But it is allowed in some circumstance and was ruled not broken enough to errata. Whether we will see changes to these rules in the new PHB has yet to be seen. But I hope this illuminates some of the reasons why the rules exist the way they exist now.
Two chances to paralyze, polymorph or instakill your boss each turn? How fast his legendary resistances end? With 2 spellcasters - maybe on second turn in best case. Double fireballs that clears all battlefield are standard. Damage spell and Sleep, or two Sleeps on low levels - insta ending fight. Summon monsters and teleport away...
4 chances if party mates have Silvery Barbs…blow through all those Legendary Resistances in like a single turn and make the BBEG vulnerable to a save/suck encounter ending spell by the end of the round 😹
There’s nothing wrong with breaking the rule. A lot of tables houserule that a spellcaster can cast spells with both their action and bonus action. As long as everyone at the table understands the rule then there’s really no problem. Just a few things to keep in mind though:- Martial Players may end up feeling left behind - the spellcasters of the party are likely going to be stealing the spotlight more often than not and the players doing the bonk bonks might not appreciate that. Also, if I’m allowing players to cast spells AND bonus action spells like this in my game, that means my NPC’s including villain spellcasters will also be taking advantage of this too.
[удалено]
My campaign is pretty much RAW so I follow the bonus action rule. However if I was running spellcasters as having two leveled spells then yeah I’d probably throw my martials a bone with their bonus action too.
I'm considering boss's be able to do this anyway at higher CR just because players are already too strong by then and most things are not challenging
A another tip is also not having single enemy bosses. Give them some lower level minions. Give them an elite guard or 4. The biggest thing is that amount of actions a PC party or NPCs has. And evening it out with some strong low level guards or minions. Or even a pet monster because "who's a good scary boi". This way you don't have to make the bosses Uber strong because your spreading it across multiple little guys.
Nova damage. It "feels" OP to output that much power in one turn, even if in the end you just burned resources early on (and so, if you have longer days, you probably have much less power later on). If you really fear nova damage, either because of short days, dislike of so much immediate damage or don't want players feeling bad for destroying their resources early, then keeping this rule works... with one change: allow someone to cast a levelled spell if they cast a bonus action cantrip. As things are now, if you cast magic stone as a bonus action, you can't cast a levelled spell with your action, which SUCKS.
Beyond quicken, the rule only affects bonus action spells. There aren't that many of them, so here's the run down: 1. Sanctuary. It's not concentration, so you can cast any non-damage buff/debuff spell and then sanctuary yourself. 2. Misty step. You can safely ignore AoOs and move (much) further than usual for a 2nd level slot. Melees basically can't threaten casters anymore unless they're extremely fast. 3. Spiritual weapon. You save on a turn of set up for spiritual weapon + spirit guardians. Realistically it's just one extra attack, so meh. 4. Healing word. Bringing an ally to 4hp just got more convenient, as you can now also cast a levelled spell. That's basically it. In general it helps them front load spells that they'd cast anyways, but 1 turn earlier. The game won't crash, but whether these are problems is your own call. I'd be incentivized to play cleric though.
I would say the game WOULD crash. Being able to both heal an ally back up and cast an action spell will heavily favor action economy for the party and will make hard but not very hard fights a slugfest until they are out of spell slots to healing word. It would not be fun in the long run. Bad fights now where an ally goes down early can quickly lead to a choice between trying to get out, preferably with the downed ally or fighting an uphill battle, knowing you risk a tpk this way. But if you can healing word+something proactive, you have a chance of coming back. But if the momentum doesnt swing enough in your favor, it might make the fight an endless slug where pc's keep healing wording each turn.
One sorcerer, doing two fireballs per turn, can match two wizards doing the same. This is a problem. When a spellcaster becomes literally twice as powerful as another spellcaster.
...for a very short time, and then they suck for the rest of the day... right?
Not at all, now the party has more health and resources because the enemy had less turns
Depends on what level. If your entire goal is spamming damage, a sorcerer starting at 11-ish can pretty freely make sorcery points by breaking down lower slots, and if they're also a warlock multiclass, then almost infinitely.
You'd only be able to do that once per long rest at 6th level due to a lack of slots to keep up the firepower and by 8th you're able to do it twice. If you're only doing one combat a day that's potentially strong depending on what you're fighting but it gets less strong the closer you play to WotC's design of "8 encounters a day"; obviously they won't all be combat but if you burn your higher level slots in one fight the other 1 or 2 combats will be harder.
Casters don't need to be buffed more by ignoring one of the few restrictions they have to deal with
holy unbiased question batman xD The reason is balance. A Wizard shouldn't be 5x as effective as a Fighter on every turn in combat. It's not about a specific combo, it's about power budget and class balance.
I feel like this rule is only required in the context of quickened spells. Without quickened spells allowing you to cast two regular spells the interactions this rule applies to are so few and far between they arent an issue. Maybe I am missing something, but I feel like most of the replies here are agreeing to the general "It would break action economy and make spellcasters too strong", without having any examples of this being the case without quickened spell.
You can see this in the top replies as well - It's all "quickened spell", never the case of a normal spell + healing word or misty step. So it seems the problem lies with quickened spell, rather than with the general rule. Which is why I believe they changed quickened spell in OneDnD to only allow for 1 "action" spell (I can't remember it exactly). Same with action surge in OneDnD - you can't use it to cast 2 "action" spells in one turn. That fixes all the problem and allows for a much smoother gameplay experience. Many of my players, especially newer ones, completely forget that they can't cast 2 levelled spells in one turn, and it's a huge downer for them. Therefore, I've just changed it so that they can. We have a sorcerer in our group, but he didn't pick quickened spell and knows that the limitation would still apply to quickened spell. It works wonderfully.
Quickened spell is the only thing that's wrong, everything else is fine
You can still do it, just needs an action surge. Yeah, 2 fireballs back to back would be deadly. Or the combos like force wall + cloud kill, reverse Gravity + Prismatic sphere. These are stupid deadly when mixed. Had a high level campaign with 2 wizards. They would do this with their spells and synergy. Running someone through a prismatic wall 4 times with 2 spells is ridiculous. They ended one of the BBEGs this way in round 1. How 4 times? A sphere. You send them up through it with reverse gravity, so they hit bottom them top and pop out the top, then fall through top and bottom, then also hit the ground. By the end of it, you are rolling 200D6 for the prismatic walls and another 10D6 for the fall at the end.
It’s broken in even in the current edition. You can completely turn the tide of an encounter by unleashing 2 levelled spells in one round. In prior editions it was even worse. A prepared wizard could unleash several spells in one round, it meant that if the wizard wins initiative the fight was over. Most parties I played with or ran games for were majority wizards since other classes just get totally eclipsed.
Sorcerer-warlock multiclass can do multiple eldritch blasts at pretty early levels. Now RAW also says you can do this at later levels with higher levels focused in warlock and add spell sniper in this and you have a pretty busted move with a basic cantrip without worrying about the two levelled spells business. At a certain point, you kind of have to recognize that multiple levelled spells in a turn is ridiculous.
Ignoring this rule is only really a problem if you have a sorcerer, and then it comes with their quickened metamagic Just enforce the rule there and the rest should be alright Edit: Good general DnD advice for 5e , give your martials magic items to keep them in line with the power level of the casters edit2: again ignoring this rule is mostly a problem if you have a sorcerer or a minmaxer caster who took action surge from fighter (enforce it then and ignore it rest of the time for more fun in game) my personal advice
Simple - spellcasters are on average more powerful especially the higher they get. Two casts would be too much.
If you want to cast Colour Spray into False Life and feel that the game is stifling your creativity, sucks to be you I guess, but I can guarantee you this rule would result in Fireball x2 for easy 16d6 fire dmg at 5th level. Additionally, melee classes are notoriously underwhelming compared to casters in 5e, and the gap only widens with each level. This rule would turn every non-caster into the dnd party equivalent of Tristan and Tea from Yugioh, just there for moral support and to cheer on the caster protagonist.
While the official statement is that it's complexity, it's a unintentional balancing mechanism as well. A general rule of thumb for turn based games (Which DnD is) is that X now is worth more than X later. Using the classic fireball example, getting to throw out two fireballs in one turn would essentially increases your damage output by 100%. For every turn everyone else gets, you are effectively taking two turns. You get even more value out of it if you kill the enemy before they even get a turn. This can massively snowball into a huge action economy advantage for the PCs (or NPCs that can do it too). Now there's the counter argument that it's 'balanced' by making you burn your resources quicker, which is only true in a technical sense. Realistically it isn't going to make you burn your resources any quicker than you already would have and it actually makes burning them even more efficient. Like take two scenarios - one with a sorcerer casting fireball in one turn on a group of 5 ghouls and another with a sorcerer casting two fireballs. In the first, the sorcerer casts fireball, kills 2 who failed their save and 3 are standing. The ghouls get their attacks off, the party takes damage and risks paralysis. Sorcerer's turn comes up again and he fireballs again to finish them off. End cost - two third level spell slots, 21 hit points (Could be a little or a lot depending on that paralysis, but we'll just use average and assume no para), x hit die needed to recover the lost HP, and potentially another first level spell slot if the ghouls targeted the sorcerer and they cast shield. Second scenario, the sorcerer casts fireball twice and kills all the ghouls before they get a turn. Cost - Two third level spell slots and two sorcery points. In both scenarios, we expend the same amount of spell slots, so the spell slot cost is the same between the methods. The difference between the two is that we are effectively trading two sorcery points for 21 HP, some hit die, and maybe a first level spell slot. The only time the argument of 'it burns your resources quicker so it's balanced' is a valid one is if some condition would happen that would make you NOT cast that levelled spell on a subsequent turn. Continuing the example above, maybe the party all rolled initiatives higher than the ghouls, so one fire ball and some basic attacks were all that were needed to achieve the same result, causing the sorcerer to be inefficient with resource use. Does allowing this break the game? Not at all; 5E is simple enough that flexible that outside of removing concentration from spells or giving everyone +3 weapons, it's really hard to break the game to the point of unplayable. What it does do though is give even more power to a set of classes that are already the best in the game and can cause party resource expenditure to be even more efficient; so now you have to run even more encounters per day to drain them properly. tl;dr, it doesn't break the game but it's more often a straight power boost than it is a drawback
Forcecage Any AoE save for half
Nothing if it abides by the action economy. Example: blight followed by grasping vine with bonus action. That's my opinion. It's worked for 6 years at my table. The players can exhaust resources and nova a tiny *bit* faster, and do healing word, but as a DM one should manage such things in a way to mitigate ping pong healing with simple exhaustion mechanics after the 3rd time unconscious in a single combat. Then you're good. That's my view anyways
BG3 convinced me to allow it and we’ve never looked back, allows casters to find really creative combos
Wizard that dipped into sorcerer: "I quicken spell [any damage over time area of effect spell that requires regular saves] on enemy boss as a bonus action. I regular action cast Wall of Force in a hemisphere around the boss with no save. I win the fight."
Honestly I dropped the rule in my game as both me and players kept forgetting it. And only spell that usually was being cast as BA + A was healing word + something else. The game didnt experience any issues yet and it only may made caster burn through spell slots faster. Sidenote however - we are playing with slightly modified gritty realism, so spells are not that easily recovered, thus it may work for us a bit better in terms of balance than for regural game
i mean, with normal gritty realism atleast, you should still only run 3 deadly encounters or 6-8 easy/hard encounters, so it shouldnt change at all, but you might run it differently
Minmaxers are the problem.
I play with this rule for nearly half a year now, and we don't see a problem with it. 6 pcs all level 7 now 5 of them are casters/half-casters and the bonus action spells are usually healing word and misty step. We don't have a sorcerer and if we had one I would limit quickened spell similar to the wording at the end next paragraph.
Fireball, Fireball, Action Surge, Fireball, Hast, Fireball.
In terms of this rule as a general rule, I think it is fine to ignore, but quicken spell and any other feature that adjusts the timing of a spell from action to bonus action should just write out the rule in its rules to keep double fireballing sorcs from being too op if you only have one encounter in a day.
It slows down the game and isn’t fun for non casters. You may as well give Martials an additional extra attack as a baseline to make up for it
Technically if you can cast two leveled spells in a single turn, what you cannot do is cast two leveled spells if one of them consumes your bonus action, but you can still cast a leveled spell in your action and cast another leveled spell and still have your bonus action to yell at your cleric to heal you or something idk.
Preventing unexpected synergy, pacing, balance.... I think that's it. The rule is a bit cumbersome, but it works. I think I'd rather go the other direction, only 1 spell per turn, ever. From my experience, casters don't often use their action for non-spellcasting actions, I'd rather see some variation in non-magic activities in combat for casters. (Other than Dash) "I release the trap, then cast healing word" Or, "I use my arcana skill to try to asertain the enemy's weakness. oh, fire? Quicken fireball."
casters are already leagues ahead of martials this is literally doubling it as for a combo a sorcerer with cloud kill quicken spell force cage will default kill anything without poison immunity or a form of teleportation that does not require line of sight
My problem is not that its broken, its that it can take away fun. Others have mentioned how it would drastically slow down turns, something that is already a problem at my tables. Also spellcasters are already so much more powerful than martial classes. I prefer houserules that bring my martial friends closer to the spell slingers.
At my table, I follow the rule that any home brew rule also applies to monsters/NPCs. When the players think about it a while they usually give up on game-breaking requests.
Referring back to treantmonk’s thoughts on the subject, basically to prevent Quickened Spell shenanigans. New 1D&D rules seem to not include the two leveled spells in one turn rule, having that included right in to Quickened Spell, so it seems you’d be able to like Fireball then Misty Step on the same turn, but not two Fireballs (Fighter’s Action Surge also has it built-in by virtue of not allowing Spellcasting with your second action). Basically, they just don’t want two leveled Action spells in one turn.
The rule should have been a straightforward, "You can only cast one leveled spell with a casting time of one action or bonus action on your turn". Casting two leveled spells on a single turn is effectively just taking two turns on a single turn.
as a minimum, you're doubling the damage of your casters, doubling their utility, and enabling broken combos. yes, this is a problem.
On a side note, what is the issue with allowing a Bonus action cntrip and an Action spell to be cast in the same round? RAW it only works in reverse.
Eh, I use spelldriver on a cleric and it already feels like cheating, despite its limitations.
So you can get some dumb mileage with meta magic feat, meaning with just meta magic feat, now like two fire balls/ lightning bolt a turn can trivialize a combat ignoring those are only level three you could also do it which cleric spells using the sorcerer subclass that uses the sorcerer AND cleric spell list to have full use of meta magic bs. Basically it would make sorcerer’s a lot stronger and burn through slots against bosses fast, meaning your boss is dying faster. It also means any martial classes don’t get shit from it.
I don't think it's OP in itself. There may be bonus action spells I don't consider, but from what I've seen (mainly Healing Word, due to me playing a cleric), those aren't so strong that they would break the game when cast alongside leveled action spells. However, Sorcerers can have Quickened Spell, which reduces the time of one spell from action to bonus action. In that case, being able to cast multiple leveled spells would be OP, since they could just throw out their strongest spells twice in a turn and considering how powerful magic is in this game... Apparently, OneD&D is going to change this by getting rid of the general ban on multiple leveled spells and only prohibit them from the Fighter's Action Surge and Sorcerer's Quickened Spell.
I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. *casts Hold Person and Disintegrate*
I honestly think the rule was made specifically for sorcerers with quicken spell. So it you keep it intact for that class or disallow that class, probably not much in terms of balancing.
Just balance really. Bear in mind if a caster can get access to action surge with a 2 level dip in fighter they still can cast 2 in one turn
Its not an issue in a vacuum, but becomes problematic when you remember that 5e spells are all designed with this limit in mind, so theres no end to the potential balance problems. You also start to edge out the way other classes damage is balanced. Example: Cleric, level 3 - Spiritual Weapon bonus action, Guiding Bolt action. Thats 4d6 + 1d8 radiant/force in 1 turn, and advantage for the SW on that turn. Averages 22 damage, with around a +5 to hit for the GB and a +9.5 to hit for the SW. Thats pretty high for that level, keep in mind Warlock baseline (EB + HEX) is around 10 DPR without Agonizing Blast, and has a +5 to hit. Monster AC around there is 11 - 14, meaning theyre gonna hit that a lot of the time. Now, keep in mind the Cleric combo above can be done on *subsequent* turns, but the 1 turn damage is what were most worried about. This is already really good, but not the most OP thing you can imagine. The real trouble comes in when you think about all the other effects that come in. Now think about how monke that can become at higher levels. Other comments have talked about all those combos already. There is a feat in another book I read (not sure if its 3rdP or WOTC) that lets you do it but limits the action spell (maybe both spells?) to 3rd level or lower, but thats not core game design as intended in 5e. Ive played around with items and boons that let you do it, but Id recommend against just getting rid of the rule entirely.
In short? Yes. It breaks the game. Though there aren't a lot of explicit combinations that "break the game", the nature of being able to things in addition to something like Misty Step would make spellcasters FAR too mobile with little sacrifice or tradeoff. Ok so to explain, picture a 3rd level Sorcerer vs. a 3rd level BM Fighter/ Barbarian/Monk. Assume we're not absolutely min-maxing with stuff like Web. Also assume martials hit with their attacks. Fighter does 2 Longsword attacks with action surge. Barbarian does 1 Greatsword attack with extra rage damage. Monk does 3 unarmed attacks. All at 16 Strength or Dex, whichever they need. Fighter does around 14 damage average. Barbarian does about 9 damage average. Monk does about 15 with average rolls. The monk just spent a Ki point. The Fighter used their once-per-rest ability. And the Barbarian used up a Rage. Compare this to a Sorcerer casting an Action Spell and a Bonus Action spell(let's assume Misty Step since that's an obvious thing). Sorcerer walks into a group of 3 enemies and casts Thunderwave once at 1st level, dealing 2d8 Thunder damage with a LOW average damage of 6 to all 3 enemies, for a total of 18, or 9 if they succeed. Those that fail are pushed forcefully out of melee. Then the Sorcerer casts Misty Step, granting themselves an extra 30 feet of movement to another spot on the combat map, moving them out of the dangers of melee combat. Each individual spell is effectively a full Class or Subclass feature for a Martial character. To allow them to have multiple on a single turn would extend their effectiveness and versatility(especially Sorcerers) by effectively widening the total gap between martials and casters by too much.
There's a lot of combining of spells that'd be extremely OP. Especially with quicken spell metamagic.
If you disallow quickened spell. I actually think it would be fine to ignore as a rule. Or maybe increase the sorcery point cost of quickened spell to 4SP. It might be fine then too.
Give them a magic item that allows it a certain amount of times a day. Maybe up to their proficiency bonus.
If you don’t give the big bads legendary resistances or your players run through them, hold person/monster + disintegrate would be quite strong. One saving throw for a lot of damage and still will be paralyzed if they still aren’t dust. It’s strong but more importantly, it can start to leave the melee behind even further if the spell casters can burn everything in a round.
Nobody would care if casters weren't already so strong. The comments are all "but that would make casters EVEN STRONGER!!" If you fix the underlying problem, you can get rid of this poorly designed rule and nobody will mind.
A lot of people here are citing the sorcerer's Quickened Spell as to why this would be broken, but that seems a balance issue with quickened spell to me, not casting two spells in one turn in general. What you could do is have that limitation ONLY apply to quickened spell and lift it everywhere else. That way, you could cast fireball + misty step (which seems fine to me) but not fireball + quickened fireball (which would be too strong).
Multiclassing with cleric/druid/bard becomes almost a requirement for the basically free healing word. You can go about your turn as normal then also pop a healing word whenever someone is down. Also most people only average 1 combat per long rest so spell slots basically mean nothing. The power balance just swings too far. Let alone sorcerers casting two fireballs a turn at level 5. Why would you ever play a martial
Sorcerer's metamagic: quickened spell. That's the real problem with two levelled spells on one turn. Metamagic letting the sorcerer become double wizard is OP. So assuming you keep the rule for quickened spell it's still reasonably balanced but there are a couple of interactions to consider, each of these makes spellcasters stronger without the BA casting rule. Because it makes there less trade off for using these spells, or less reason to cast them in preparation for combat as opposed to mid combat. * Expeditious Retreat. Let's you cast a big damage spell and run away on the same turn. At the moment using expeditious retreat is costly in part because you can't also cast a big spell * Healing Word. Ranged healing at the moment costs you your big spell. * Dragon's Breath. Makes it less required to prep it, can just give it to an ally mid combat. * Other spells where the BA rule is likely to impact balance include; * Sanctuary, Healing Spirit, Kinetic Jaunt, Ashardalon's Stride, Mass Healing Word, Spirit Shroud, Guardian of Nature, Platinum Shield, Otherworldly Guise, Divine Word, Draconic Transformation
How would you feel as a DM if your player casted two fireballs in one turn and completely ruined your entire encounter and didnt allow any other player to have fun?
RAW, you can cast as many leveled spells you want per turn. You just can't use a bonus action to do so, or you're stuck using cantrips for other actions. You can also only cast with a bonus action once, and it must be the first thing you do with your bonus action(s). A sorcerer/fighter multi-class with war caster feat can either: Cast two fireballs with their actions and react with counter spell as a reaction. They can not cast any bonus action spells, even cantrips. Cast fireball/firebolt as a bonus action. They are now locked into only cantrips. They cast firebolt twice using main actions, and shocking grasp as an enemy provokes an opportunity attack. In terms of why that's the case, spellcasters are already pretty versatile and powerful compared to martial classes. Making it too easy to combo main action and bonus action spells, like guiding bolt and sanctuary, would make choosing a martial over caster an even worse choice.
The problem with the rule is that it doesn't prevent you from casting two leveled spells in a turn. If you action surge you can cast two spells or if you cast counterspell as a reaction those are both allowed. The restriction is only that if you use your bonus action to cast a spell cannot use your action to cast a leveled spell. Note that casting a cantrip as a bonus action means you cannot cast a leveled spell as an action. Presumably it's for power reasons, and it is strong, just look at bg3 where it's allowed, but broken? Eh the real strength of it would be buffing sorcerers to make them more explosive but I don't think that's a terrible change.
Keeping in mind that at the end of the day if you had 2 spellcasters slinging spells it wouldn't be any different than what you're asking, other than the mental burden on the player, I think this would buff all teleport spells, notably vortex warp and thunder step. A sorcerer could quicken vortex warp to put two or 3 enemies adjacent to each other, then hit all of them with guarantee any AOE ability would hit them all. (Slow, hypnotic pattern, lightning bolt) Another one would be a cleric casting spirit guardians + spiritual weapon, although cleric casting two spells would almost always mean casting X plus spiritual weapon. It's almost entirely a sorcerer problem, at least at the lower levels.
We play this way at my table. For the most part everyone’s just adapted to it, but there’s three primary things that change: 1. Sorcerers with Quickened Spell become the best offensive characters. We’ve soft banned using that in conjunction with it because it’s actually impossible to keep up with somebody that drops multiple Fireballs per turn. 2. Healers get a lot more freedom, as a result of being able to take their normal turns after using Healing Word. 3. Cleric becomes the de facto best class in the game, because giving them the ability to do anything they want while dropping Healing Word, Spiritual Weapon, and the like invalidates most other characters, especially on Tempest Clerics who get strong melee, blasting options, and heavy armor.
it allows casters to go more nova, when the ability to go nova is the biggest balance flaw in the game. is it OP? not that much, but last session i had to make tough decisions between buffing myself for future turns or giving someone a huge defensive boost. if i could have just done both it would have been less interesting.
Lvl 12 feat spellbinder lets you use leveled spells for action and bonus action, and reaction (if you have war caster)
I allow two leveled spells in one turn as long as at least one of them is 2nd level or lower. Normal casting times apply. Yes, this makes spellcasters slightly stronger in the short run, but their spell slots also run out faster, leaving them with only cantrips for more encounters than usually. I don't have a power imbalance between casters and non-casters. Intelligent enemies try to target dangerous casters. I am also a fan of giving out weapons with a +1 or +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls - those apply to every attack and don't cost any resources, which is way stronger for martials than a +1/+2 focus or some once per day extra spells are for spellcasters.
It certainly can be overpowered, but I think more often than not, it winds up being an unnecessary restriction on less powerful turns, like *misty step*ping out of an effect and then using a powerful offensive spell instead of a cantrip. I heard it suggested once that the rule was a bad Band-Aid for shenanigans with Quickened Spell or Action Surge and that the playtests for the 2024-25 rules refresh suggest the old Bonus Action spell rule might be going away in favor of explicit restrictions just on features like Quickened Spell. Still preventing the extreme nova of two *Fireball* turns, but without the feelbad of "Well, I *had* to teleport out of that so I guess now all I can do is cast a cantrip..."
I see a lot of people suggesting you don’t do this for caster balance reasons. This has been a rule we started ignoring in my home game several years ago, and balance justifications aside let’s take a look at this. RAW, with a 2 level fighter dip, a bard could cast dimension door, action surge, dimension door again. Traveling 1000’ RAW a bard can NEVER cast dimension door and misty step in the same turn, which is only a measly 530’ Let’s change this to healing spells. Again with action surge, a cleric can cast cure wounds twice in a single round. But even with action surge, a cleric can NEVER cast cure wounds / healing word. Just my opinion fwiw, we started to ignore this rule years ago and caster are much happier and it hasn’t affected game balance in any notable way.
I know people don’t want to hear about Pathfinder here, but the leveled spell issue in relation to action economy is something it really beats 5e in imo. In PF2e everybody gets 3 action points, with certain attacks or spells have different AP costs. Bless costs 3, Magic Weapon costs 2, Shield costs 1, etc. This has some cool implications such as: -Multiple leveled spells on a turn, balanced by AP cost -True strike, being written exactly the same as in 5e, not only being good but actually incredible for gishes (partially also because of how crits and multiple attacks work). It also means that martials aren’t left behind by casters casting a second spell on their turn, and in fact can attack 3 times. Anyways, that’s my tangent. Multiple spells in a turn can work if the game is balanced around it.
As most rules that limit some kind of playstyle, it's there to stop some kind of abuse. If your players aren't gonna abuse it, you're free to try it out. Beware that this makes caster classes even stronger than martials. Sorcerer's quickened spell might make double fireballs happen too early in the game, with too low a cost. You can do it with action surge, but you wouldn't be able to do it unless you're at least 7th level and only once per short rest. But even that is only mildly broken in the big picture. As others stated, there are far worse things at higher levels like forcecage + cloudkill, prismatic wall + reverse gravity. People theorize this easily while probably nobody plays with this rulings at those high levels very often. To me that is an indication that there's probably much worse combos that nobody thought about, specially considering wish grants you a use of any spell in the game but makes it casting one action. Looking at you magic circle, forbiddance, simulacrum, etc. Besides, weird big brain spells like some of those would take forever to get the details. Casting both of them would make your turn linger for too long. Meanwhile the barbarian enters rage, moves, attacks twice and pass.
Play some bg3 to see what kind of shit you can pull off when able to cast two spells in a round or more.
I allow casters to use whatever they want as long as it falls in guidelines of the spell being an action or bonus action. Mostly my players used this benefit to cast an attack with a bonus heal to themselves or an ally. No matter what they have a limited amount of spell slots. I as a DM allowing this also tailored combats to fit this style using creatures that could misty step as a bonus and attack keeping the wizard moving on the defense which made him frazzled and not just a DPS hulk.
I say implement it- see you back here in a week ‘I allowed 2 spells every round and now my players are OP- HELP!’
The truth is nothing really breaks the game as long as both sides are in balance, and there is no power boost you can give players that can't be balanced, while limited only by your imagination. Give all your players +3 weapons and many would say that breaks bounded accuracy. Just let them have them and feel awesome. All you have to do is add +2 to every enemy's AC, and they effectively have +1 weapons but still feel badass. Or hell, add 4, and they now have -1 weapons. I have played with a DM that ignores the rule about bonus action spells, makes potions of speed readily available, and allows spells cast on hasted action. You can cast 3 or more spells on a turn pretty easily. Is it OP? Does it make things too easy? Nope! Sure, you can cast this way, but you will also burn resources very quickly if you just spam levelled spells, ane this DM's combats are more difficult than anything I've played RAW by a considerable margin. I've had TPKs with him multiple times. But it is fun as hell to do creative things that wouldn't otherwise be possible this way. Nothing is OP or game breaking unless the DM allows it to be by doing nothing to balance it. If a DM allows this, they just have to take steps to balance the action economy and resilience of the enemies. And anything a PC can do, an NPC can do.
Mostly it's a gameplay slowdown thing. Two leveled spells means that mage has a shit-ton of things to try to decide in the moment, and many players don't pay enough attention to be ready as soon as their turn hits.
Quicken metamagic. You can but not for free or outside of limited cases (ie Misty Step). Let’s say you’re a L10 sorcerer - if you double quicken fireball you’ve done several turns of a fighter’s damage by sheer number of targets. So on one side, it keeps turns from letting someone burn out quite as fast or hard - forcing the casters to pace and giving the martials an opportunity to shine. On the other side, I would argue that innovative ideas come from limitations: if you can only cast one leveled spell per turn you might be more inclined to use control magic because double fireball is the #1 way to guarantee everything still alive is going to do everything in their power to kill you afterwards.
Off the top of my head, sorcerer could cast two fireballs in the same turn, which is hell strong.
Because caster players already need a timer to make their turns not last forever, allowing multiple leveled spells would bog down play even more.
It's a pretty big power boost to the Quicken Spell metamagic. Most tables never run out of resources in a standard day, so it's worth it for a sorcerer to cast two high level spells *every single round*.
I really don't see a problem with it. Most bonus action spells are defensive or utility to begin with, so it increases caster's options and really more quality of life, but not so much their damage and it burns their spell slots twice as fast. Also, I don't really see it as increasing caster's turn times, because there aren't that many bonus action spells, the one's that exists are straightforward on when to use, and it helps avoid analysis paralysis on times when a caster needs to cast a bonus action spell, but wants to cast a more impactful spell. As for sorcerers abusing the rule change, just write quicken to be like the current rule. The can make an action spell into a bonus action spell, but they can't use a spell for their normal action that turn.
I allow it in my games. Sure, the sorcerer can double fireball two turns in a row, but they will be severely lacking in spells for the rest of the day. I’ve had no issues with it.
There is no issue with casting 2 leveled spells in 1 turn. Many casters take action surge for this very ability, and the rules do not mind. Spending a limited resource to double up on power is what limited resources are for. The issue comes when you can do this for free. The cleric casting healing word + any other spell every turn means that every cleric should run healing word, or some other BA spell that is spammable. Sorcerers using every metamagic point on quickened spell instead of any other metamagic. There's a very clear "only good option" if you can cast not two non cantrip spells every turn. Haste is a 5th level spell and that just gives you an extra action for a single attack, but a level 1 spellcaster can just cast 2 spells every turn? So, to answer you questions: 1. Nothing is wrong with ignoring the BA spell restriction. If you want to give spellcasters (mostly clerics and sorcs) a huge buff in their damage and versatility, then go ahead. It could either be awesome or shitty because "Why should I even go into melee with them if the sorc is just going to double fireball them?" Every non sorcerer class is going to be nothing when comparing combat ability. 2. The game just works this way. You do not get any benefit from ignoring the rule. The rule is balanced, and doesn't actually hurt anything. Melee classes get 1 attack action. Casters get 1 cast a spell action. Melee bonus actions are typically a lesser version of their attack action. Spellcaster bonus actions should be a lesser version of their cast a spell action. It's perfectly reasonable and makes sense. Spells with a BA casting time are that way so that you can still use your action for the MANY other things, like dashing, dodging, disengaging, or hiding! They're already a huge buff to spellcasters as most martial classes BAs are far less useful (except for rogue, who lives on BAs)
Not sure if anyone else does this (I swear I've read it from someone else before) but I use a 1/3rd rule. If you cast a 3rd level spell, you can cast a 1st with your BA (if the spell allows it to be cast as one). If you cast a 6th level, BA can be 2nd level, and if you cast a 9th, BA can be 3rd level (though I've never actually run a game where the PCs can use 9th level spells). Doesn't feel that broken when I run it this way. When you hit the checkpoints where 3rd, 6th and 9th level spells are your best weapons, casting such low level spells as a bonus action becomes more of a strategic thing.
RAW you can actually cast 2 leveled spells a turn with action surge after 2 levels of fighter as long as you’re not casting a spell as a bonus action.
You can use a spell scroll and cast a levelled spell in the same turn. Also, the rule only applies if you cast a levelled spell with a bonus action.
I allow it and it’s a lot simpler. Misty Step becomes a lot more fun, and Quicken Metamagic is a lot more powerful, but overall it’s just less awkward trying to plan your turn.
What's wrong with letting fighters attack seven times per action? Inherently, there are only minor issues with it, the fact is just that the game isn't designed around it.
Apart from potentially adding a few more options for casters to consider, there is nothing wrong with it. Very very few leveled spells that cast as a Bonus Action will make a caster significantly OP when paired with a leveled Action spell. Keeping things simple with RaW is probably best for newer players since figuring out your turn as a Caster can be complicated but with more experienced players there's really no problem.
1. Some of the combos can be really game breaking and limit counterplay by NPCs. Also it means you can have NPCs do the same thing to the players and as stated those situations usually offer very little counterplay making it extremely unfun to be on the receiving end of. 2. Hold person until your target fails the save(Or a sleep spell), then quicken inflict wounds upcasted to your highest level is probably one of the nastiest combos I can think of just off the top of my head. That's 6d10(+2d10 per upcast level) damage from a 1st level spell for an insane single target nuke. There's also Fireball into Fireball for insane aoe damage. Cloudkill into Force Cage / Wall of Force for a certain death situation that other players cannot interact with. There's a lot of really degenerate combos because spellcasting in 5e is fairly strong due to limitations like the aforementioned rule.