It’s a classic, so much so that it’s inspired a dozen memes. It’s every magic-user’s favorite 3rd Level spell: Fireball!
So, what does that bad boy look like?
A bright streak flashes from your pointing finger to a point you choose within range and then blossoms with a low roar into an explosion of flame.
Each creature in a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on that point must make a Dexterity saving throw. A target takes 8d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
The fire spreads around corners.
It ignites flammable objects in the area that aren’t being worn or carried.
What’s not to like? Hitting everyone in a large radius with 8d6 of fire damage? It is Teh Awesome.
Of course, Fire is one of the most commonly resisted damage types (largely “thanks” to Fireball), and the save is on DEXterity, which is something a lot of bad guys have in abundance.
But, still, it’s pretty damned amazing. No wonder all the spellcasters cannot wait to get it, and then to use it.
So let’s talk about the rules.
The Rules of Fireball
Fireball has, traditionally in D&D, been a debate about physics, calculating the volume of the fireball, then the volume of the room, then figuring out the blowback if the latter is smaller than the former, etc.
5e has simplified this. Though the spell talks about an “explosion of flame,” the consensus is that, RAW, it acts more like a volume that is suddenly filled with roiling flame, as long as there is an open channel within range.
There’s no ka-boom that roars down the hallway like in Backdraft.
Walls and doors, etc., block the effect.
All this does mean that Fireball can affect folk out of line of sight. The following picture (source unknown) illustrates:
The magic user on the steps casts Fireball in the middle of the corridor ahead. (Properly speaking, spells should anchor on an intersection, not in the middle of a square or an edge. But I digress.)
The lady around the corner gets hit, even though she’s out of Line of Sight from both the caster and the center of the spell, because the fireball spreads around the corner — within the 20 foot radius.
The figure in the room, though, is not hit because the doors are all closed. If the upper door by the lady was open, though, that figure would get hit, even if it’s a lot longer to walk from the center of the spell to that figure than 20 feet.
Fireball AoE template
(I’ve seen some suggestion that the line-of-explosion has to go through full squares; that seems to be a DM call, though. Under that suggestion, the figure in the room would not get hit if the upper door was open, because the effect has to go through half-squares. This gets solved, though, by using a squares template, especially on a VTT, rather than drawing a circle.)
(And, no, we’re not going to worry, for purpose of area of effect, whether the doors catch on fire and burn through.)
A bright streak flashes from you to a point you choose within range and then blossoms with a low roar into a fiery explosion. Each creature in a 20-foot-radius Sphere centered on that point makes a Dexterity saving throw, taking 8d6 Fire damage on a failed save or half as much damage on a successful one.
Flammable objects in the area that aren’t being worn or carried start burning.
This is almost precisely the language 5e uses, but leaving out the very significant “the fire spreads around corners” verbiage. The implication is that total cover from the point of the explosion (not the PoV of the caster) shields the target. It’s no longer an instantly roiling sphere of flames; it’s an explosion (as the text has always implied).
Fireball remains a very nifty spell, don’t get me wrong. But 5.5e gives it a small nerf for cover.
Is there a limit on the number of spells you can cast on your turn? There’s no rule that says you can cast only X number of spells on your turn, but there are some practical limits. The main limiting factor is your Action. Most spells require an Action to cast, and unless you use a feature like the Fighter’s Action Surge, you have only one action on your turn.
By default, you can, pragmatically, cast one normal spell per turn, using the Cast a Spell Action. Most spells have a casting time of 1 Action. Easy peasy, right?
But what about spells that you can cast as a Bonus Action? There aren’t many, but they say it right in the spell timing. (It’s worth noting “Action” and “Bonus Action” are not interchangeable; if something is one, it cannot be done as the other.) So if you cast a Bonus Action spell, can you then cast a regular Action spell?
Bonus Action
A spell cast with a Bonus Action is especially swift. You must use a Bonus Action on your turn to cast the spell, provided that you haven’t already taken a Bonus Action this turn. You can’t cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 Action.
If you want to Cast a Spell that has a casting time of 1 Bonus Action, remember that you can’t cast any other spells before or after it on the same turn, except for cantrips with a casting time of 1 Action.
So, if you cast a spell, such as Healing Word, with a Bonus Action timing, you can cast another spell with your Action, but that other spell must be a cantrip, not a levelled spell.
But what about Sorcerers?
Sorcerers have a metamagic tool, though, called Quickened Spell.
Quickened Spell
When you Cast a Spell that has a casting time of 1 Action, you can spend 2 Sorcery Points to change the casting time to 1 Bonus Action for this casting.
So that lets you cast a levelled spell of 1 Action casting as a Bonus Action instead. But that doesn’t get rid of the limitation above: “If you want to Cast a Spell that has a casting time of 1 Bonus Action, remember that you can’t cast any other Spells before or after it on the same turn, except for cantrips with a casting time of 1 action.”
Does Quickened Spell allow a sorcerer to cast two spells a round of 1st level or higher?
No, the sorcerer must follow the rule for casting a spell as a Bonus Action and casting another spell on the same turn; the other spell must be a cantrip with a casting time of 1 Action.
Along this line, there is an Epic Boon that allows a spell you know to be turned into a Bonus Action spell permanently. But we needn’t delve into that right now …
Unless noted otherwise, the Bonus Action can go before or after the Action, but remember that you can only cast something as a Bonus Action if that’s its timing in the spell book, or if you use Quickened Spell to cast it.
But what about spells that give Bonus Actions?
If a spell gives you a Bonus Action, using that Bonus Action does not trigger this limitation effect (because you aren’t casting the spell in the Bonus Action). For example.
The rule on casting a spell as a Bonus Action (see PH, 202) applies only on the turn you cast the spell. For example, Spiritual Weapon can be cast as a Bonus Action, and it lasts for 1 minute. On the turn you cast it, you can’t cast another spell before or after it, unless that spell is a cantrip with a casting time of 1 Action.
Until Spiritual Weapon ends, it gives you the option of controlling its spectral weapon as a Bonus Action. That Bonus Action does not involve casting a spell, despite the fact that it’s granted by a spell, so you can control the weapon and cast whatever spell you like on the same turn.
But what about Action Surge?
One further edge exception to this is if you are a spellcaster who’s taken a couple of levels of Fighter (or are doing the Eldritch Knight fighter subclass).
Action Surge
Starting at 2nd Level, you can push yourself beyond your normal limits for a moment. On your turn, you can take one additional Action.
If you cast a second spell using Action Surge, you aren’t limited to casting a cantrip with it.
If you also cast a Bonus Action spell of some sort, though, those regular Action spells would be limited to cantrips (both of them). Because, again,
If you want to Cast a Spell that has a casting time of 1 Bonus Action, remember that you can’t cast any other spells before or after it on the same turn, except for cantrips with a casting time of 1 Action.
Well, then, what about Reaction Spells?
The rules about spellcasting actions also get bumped about by Reaction spells. Some spells (such as Shield) can be cast as a Reaction. You only get one Reaction per round, and Reactions (to others’ actions) usually take place outside of your turn. But … not always.
Reaction Timing
Certain game features let you take a special action, called a Reaction, in response to some event. Making Opportunity Attacks and casting the Shield spell are two typical uses of Reactions. If you’re unsure when a Reaction occurs in relation to its trigger, here’s the rule: the Reaction happens after its trigger completes, unless the description of the Reaction explicitly says otherwise.
Once you take a Reaction, you can’t take another one until the start of your next turn.
Reactions
Some spells can be cast as Reactions. These spells take a fraction of a second to bring about and are cast in response to some event. If a spell can be cast as a Reaction, the spell description tells you exactly when you can do so.
There are some weird edge cases where you might end up using a Reaction spell on your own turn. E.g., on my turn …
I Cast a Spell Fireball at the orcs.
I take a step forward, coming into range of the enemy wizard.
The enemy wizard fires off his Readied action of “Cast a Spell Magic Missile If I Step Within Range.”
I React with a Shield spell.
I react on my own turn, and that’s fine. And there’s no problem with effectively my casting two spells (my Action and my Reaction) because there’s no limitation on that; none of the conditions discussed above come into play because this doesn’t involve a Bonus Action.
But consider this case:
I use a Bonus Action to cast a Shillelagh cantrip.
I Cast a Spell Flame Bolt cantrip at the orcs (since I have already cast as a Bonus Action, I can only do a cantrip as my Cast a Spell action).
I take a step forward, coming into range of that enemy wizard.
The enemy wizard fires off his Readied action of “Cast Magic Missile If I Step Within Range.”
I React with a Shield spell … but I can’t.
Because Shield is not a cantrip and because I cast a Bonus Action spell and I can’t cast another leveled spell on my turn once I’ve done that. Again, as the rules say, once you’ve cast a spell as your Bonus Action, “You can’t cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action.” That includes Reactions on my turn, just like it includes the second Action in an Action Surge.
If the enemy wizard acted right after my turn and fired the Magic Missile, then the Shield could be cast as a Reaction just fine, because I would not be Reacting on the same turn as when I cast a Bonus Action spell. Zany, but true.
Casting a Bonus Action spell does preclude casting a Reaction spell on the same turn.
In short …
So the answer to “How many spells can I cast on a turn?” seems to be:
Three levelled spells (Cast a Spell, Action Surge+Cast a Spell, Reaction) or
Three spells (Cast a Spell cantrip, Action Surge+Cast a Spell cantrip, Bonus Action)
If you don’t want to get into Action Surge, it looks like the number is two.
Bonus Action spells are really powerful in the flexibility they provide (more than one spell in a turn!), but they also gum up what else you can do, spellcasting-wise. Caveat incantor.
Any changes in this with 5.5e?
In theory, 5.5e (2024) has the same basic restrictions. In actuality, some wording alterations may (or may not) fundamentally changed things. (Remember, when in doubt, The Rule of Cool as well as The DM can dictate how they want rules to work.)
One terminology change: there is now a Magic Action for players to use, which combines casting spells with using magical items. Such things usually will note that they require a Magic Action.
One other terminology change. Instead of referring to “levelled spells” (for any spells with a level number, or over a Cantrip), 5.5e works off of “spell slots” or refers to spells that require a spell slot to use. That sounds similar, but there’s one key difference.
In the 5.5e PHB (p. 236) the rules note:
One spell with a Spell Slot per Turn On a turn, you can expend only one spell slot to cast a spell. This rule means you can’t, for example, cast a spell with a spell slot using the Magic action and another one using a Bonus Action on the same turn.
Which sounds like the 5e rules, except that it doesn’t take into account spellcasting that doesn’t use spell slots, like using magic items, including scrolls, or species magic features or class magic features. All of those are tracked and expended in a different way (e.g., species X can cast spell Y once per day). But they still don’t use spell slots — so are they legal to be stacked as a Bonus Action with a spell-slotted spell in the Magic action? Or to use as a Magic action spell alongside a Bonus Action slotted spell?
More importantly, was this change intentional, or an inadvertent result of the terminology change?
Is there a limit on the number of spells you can cast on your turn?
There’s no rule that states you can cast only X number of spells on your turn, but there are some practical limitations. The main limiting factor is your action. Many spells require an Action to cast, and unless a feature says otherwise, you only have one Action on your turn. You also must abide by the rule of only expending one spell slot to cast a spell on your turn.
So, for example, if you take your Bonus Action to cast Healing Word using a spell slot, you can also take the Magic action to cast Vicious Mockery—a cantrip which doesn’t require a spell slot.
The basic rule: you can only use a spell scroll if you are in a class that has the spell on its spell list.
Things seem pretty simple if you just look at the DMG’s description of Magic Items: Scrolls (DMG 139):
The most prevalent type of scroll is the spell scroll, a spell stored in written form …. A scroll is a consumable magic item. Unleashing the magic in a scroll requires the user to read the scroll. When its magic has been invoked, the scroll can’t be used again. Its words fade, or it crumbles into dust.
Unless the scroll’s description says otherwise, any creature that can understand a written language can read the arcane script on a scroll and attempt to activate it.
However, under Spell Scroll (DMG 200), the process is much more elaborate and restrictive (and in D&D, specific beats general):
A spell scroll bears the words of a single spell, written in a mystical cipher.
If the spell is on your class’s spell list, you can read the scroll and cast its spell without providing any material components. Otherwise, the scroll is unintelligible.
Casting the spell by reading the scroll requires the spell’s normal casting time. Once the spell is cast, the words on the scroll fade, and it crumbles to dust. If the casting is interrupted, the scroll is not lost.
If the spell is on your class’s spell list but of a higher level than you can normally cast, you must make an ability check using your spellcasting ability to determine whether you cast it successfully. The DC equals 10 + the spell’s level. On a failed check, the spell disappears from the scroll with no other effect.
That page also includes a table for determining the saving throw DC and attack bonus:
A wizard spell on a spell scroll can be copied just as spells in spellbooks can be copied. When a spell is copied from a spell scroll, the copier must succeed on an Intelligence (Arcana) check with a DC equal to 10 + the spell’s level. If the check succeeds, the spell is successfully copied. Whether the check succeeds or fails, the spell scroll is destroyed.
If you want to read a discussion of whether Spell Scrolls need to actually be scrolls, check here.
What if I just want to know what is on the scroll, just not cast it (yet)?
Since we don’t have Read Magic any more in D&D, how do we know what is on a scroll? That’s actually … a question without a very clear answer.
The Identify spell will do it. But short of that, the answer is, “It depends.”
If the spell scroll is just a recipe for the spell, then the normal rules of (1) reading scrolls and (2) identifying what it does apply:
you need to be able to read
you need to be able to cast the spell in order to read it (i.e., it has to be in your class spell list)
and you need to spend a Short Rest trying to puzzle it out, just like any other magic item.
A beneficent, organized, communicative spellcaster, in forming the scroll, might have put a label on it (“Spell of Fireball” in plaintext). In which case you’d have a pretty big clue as to what it is and does, assuming you could find a beneficent, organized, communicative spellcaster’s works. And that you could actually trust that was what it does.
In theory, you could just cast the spell by reading it for the first time, without actually knowing what it does until the very end. A charitable GM might even let you make some sort of roll (e.g., Intelligence (Arcana) vs 10 + spell level) if, as you realize at the last moment what it does, you wanted to abort casting it. (It would still suck up a turn’s Action, though, as a minimum cost.)
I would also be willing to entertain the idea that, if you simply spend a Short Rest focusing on a scroll, you should be able to get an impression of what it does even if you could not use it and/or read it. A sense of the type of magic (necromantic, evocation), aspects of it (heat, cold, water, steel), colors, a usable class (choirs singing, the smell of damp earth), that sort of thing.
Or maybe not. Since you cannot actually read the scroll without being able to cast it, it sort of plays like “language” (“Crap, this thing is in German. Anyone know German?”) … but it’s definitely not a language. I mean, it’s possible to have a scroll that is usable (intelligible) to a druid and a sorcerer, and second one to a sorcerer and a wizard, and a third to a wizard and a druid, and language simply doesn’t work like that. Instead, it’s as though the words and formulae tie into some sort of internal mindframe, some perception of reality, that is shared within some magic-using classes in some ways, but not non-magic-using classes (except, sorta, Rogues).
So more like, “Crap, this one is giving me a migraine looking at it, someone else want to give it a go?” Which might be the quickest way to deal with spell scrolls when found during an adventure, just having the various magic-users in the party pass each of them around until someone can read it. That is, you can quickly (if maybe painfully) tell if your class can use the spell, though you’ll need to spend that Short Rest to determine what precisely it is.
(Some interesting discussion here about this whole sub-question.)
What about Thieves?
Thieves are (in some cases) a weird exception to the above. At 13th level, Thief Rogues get “Use Magic Device” ability (PHB 97), giving them access to magical devices they would not be able to otherwise access.
By 13th level, you have learned enough about the workings of magic that you can improvise the use of items even when they are not intended for you. You ignore all class, race, and level requirements on the use of Magic Items.
Does the Thief’s Use Magic Device feature allow them to use spell scrolls? Yes. The intent is that a Thief can use spell scrolls with Use Magic Device
The thief would still have to make the ability check to actually cast the spell successfully, with the spellcasting ability = 0 (vs a DC of 10 + spell level), and without any proficiency bonus added in (basically a straight d20). If the spell requires a further spell attack roll, again the spellcasting ability is 0, but proficiency bonus does apply.
Do I have to Concentrate if I use a Spell Scroll to cast a spell that requires Concentration?
Some magic items [such as spell scrolls] allow the user to cast a spell from the item. The spell is cast at the lowest possible spell level, doesn’t expend any of the user’s spell slots, and requires no components, unless the item’s description says otherwise. The spell uses its normal casting time, range, and duration, and the user of the item must concentrate if the spell requires Concentration. Many items, such as potions, bypass the casting of a spell and confer the spell’s effects, with their usual duration. Certain items make exceptions to these rules, changing the casting time, duration, or other parts of a spell.
So scrolls give you the advantage of no components and no spell slots required. But you still have to concentrate/control the spells they cast.
Does any of this change in 5.5e?
The 5.5e (2024) edition rules do change some of the above.
Scrolls are now cast using the Magic Action in combat (which lets you cast a spell, or use a feature or magic item that requires a Magic action to activate).
The DMG (216) defines magical scrolls (beyond their physical description) as:
The most prevalent scroll is the Spell Scroll, a spell stored in written form. However, some scrolls, like the Scroll of Protection, bear an incantation that isn’t a spell.
Great.
Just like in 5e, when reading the scroll to unleash its power, the scroll itself (or the writing on it) is destroyed. The section concludes (on DMG 217; emphasis mine):
Any creature that can understand a written language can read a scroll and attempt to activate it unless its description says otherwise.
That sounds like the wide-open-reading clause in the 5e DMG. However, if you look up Spell Scroll in the 5.5e PHB under (ch. 6) Equipment > Adventuring Gear, you find …
If the spell is on your class’s spell list, you can read the scroll and cast the scroll using its normal casting time and without providing any Material components. If the spell requires a saving throw or attack roll, the spell save DC is 13, and the attack bonus is +5.
There’s nothing about spell scrolls in the Magic Items section of the PHB (p. 233), but in the Crafting rules right afterwards, it does talk about creating spell scrolls, much more clearly than 5e did.
A table is provided showing the time and cost of doing so (based on the spell level).
The scribe has to have Proficiency in Intelligence (Arcana) or in Calligrapher’s Tools, and must prep the spell each day while they are writing the scroll.
Any material items are consumed when the scroll is completed.
For leveled spells, the Scroll’s spell uses Spell Save DC and Spell Attack Bonus of the scribe. For cantrips, the Scroll’s spell works as though the caster were the scribe’s level.
Spell Scrolls also come up in the Wizard class description [PHB 167], talking about expanding a Wizard’s Spellbook:
You could discover a Wizard spell on a Spell Scroll, for example, and then copy it into your spellbook. […] When you find a level 1+ Wizard spell, you can copy it into your spellbook if it’s of a level you can prepare and if you have time to copy it. For each level of the spell, the transcription takes 2 hours and costs 50 GP. Afterward you can prepare the spell like the other spells in your spellbook.
Unlike in 5e, so far as I can tell, no Arcana roll is needed, nor is the Spell Scroll destroyed by doing so.
Thief and Use Magic Device
For this completely reworked Level 13 subclass feature, it notes (among other things):
You can use any Spell Scroll, using Intelligence as your spellcasting ability for the spell. If the spell is a cantrip or Level 1 spell, you can cast it reliably. If the scroll contains a higher-level spell, you must first succeed on an Intelligence (Arcana) check (DC 10 plus the spell’s level). On a successful check, you cast the spell from the scroll. On a failed check, the scroll disintegrates.
5e has very much simplified (perhaps oversimplified, some argue) the issue of dealing with water as an obstacle, a location for fighting, and a danger. Always remember, D&D is not a physics simulator (or, as some have countered, it is a horrendously and hilariously bad physics simulator).
Note that there are a lot of exceptions below for creatures that have a Swimming speed in their stat block.
Movement in the Water
Water is basically considered Difficult terrain if you don’t have a native Swimming speed. That is, each foot moved costs two feet of movement. If the terrain within the swim is itself Difficult (e.g., a strong current, a kelp bed, etc.), this might increase to each foot moved costs three feet of movement.
There is (remarkably) no distinction in speed between swimming underwater or swimming on the surface.
Don’t forget the Dash action, if you are doing nothing but movement.
Long-Distance Movement in the Water
Long-distance swimming
If you have a Swimming speed, you can swim all day without penalty; use Forced March rules from the PHB.
Otherwise (per DMG 116), you need to roll a CON Save vs DC 10 for each hour swimming. Failure means +1 level of Exhaustion. Beyond that, there is a cap on 8 hours of swimming per day.
Deep Water
The pressures and temperatures of deep water take their toll. Per DMG 116, for creatures lacking a Swimming speed:
if swimming over 100 feet deep, makes every hour count as two for Exhaustion checks and limits.
if swimming over 200 feet deep, makes every hour count as four for Exhaustion checks and limits.
Vision in the Water
Clear water, bright light — 60 foot visibility to notice an encounter
Clear water, dim light — 30 foot visibility to notice an encounter (Disadvantage to Perception).
Murky water / no light — 10 foot visibility to notice an encounter (Disadvantage to Perception).
Melee weapon attacks are at a Disadvantage (as you and/or your weapons are slowed by the drag of the water) …
… except for a thrusting/piercing weapon like a dagger, javelin, shortsword, spear, or trident.
This melee weapon restriction Rule-As-Written would seem to apply to fighting while on the surface (swimming), or even while partially immersed (imagine fighting in waist-deep water); I’m not sure that last makes sense, and an appeal to the DM might be possible. (I can see any sort of melee weapon attack being at Disadvantage when standing in, but not under, water, as you are partially Restrained.)
Ranged weapon attacks are possible underwater, but they are at a Disadvantage …
… except when using a crossbow, net, or a weapon thrown like a javelin, spear, trident, or dart.
They are an automatic miss if beyond normal range.
Material components may be difficult to manipulate while swimming or immersed in water. Arcane/Spiritual Foci are your friends!
Somatic components aren’t a problem, as only a single hand is needed for them.
Spells that require a to-hit roll do so at a Disadvantage (if above water, because of aiming while trying to stay afloat; if underwater, because of the murk and visual distortion underwater, and drag on your body).
Great way to resist Fire damage, Harry!
When you are fully immersed in water, you have Resistance to Fire damage.
But aside from that, spells don’t do anything tricky. For example, lightning does not electrify the whole area. (Remember (a) Bad Physics Simulator, and (b) it’s not actual lightning, it’s magic acting like lightning (handwaves)).
Going “Prone” underwater
If something should knock you Prone while in the water, you are instead tumbling/floundering … but suffering the same status effects as being Prone condition (including slowed movement, Disadvantage to attack, Advantage to adjacent attackers) until you “stand up” / regain control with half your movement. (References 1, 2, 3).
Drowning
The rules here are essentially the same as suffocation rules:
You can hold your breath for (CON mod + 1) minutes (with a minimum of 30 seconds or five rounds).
After that you survive (CON mod) rounds (minimum of 1) without needing more air.
After that, you are at 0 hp and are unconscious and dying. You can’t stabilize or heal until you can breathe — even if you make your three successful Death Saves, you only erase any unsuccessful ones and start the process over. You can be magically healed, but that can only get you back up to Step 2 unless you are out of the water by then.
Example: A creature with CON = 14 (CON mod = 2) can hold their breath for 3 minutes (30 rounds). After that, they start drowning/suffocating, and have 2 rounds (12 seconds) to reach air before dropping to 0 hp.
Note that 3 minutes (or even 1 minute) is a ridiculous amount of time in the game. People tend to be terrified of their character running out of air … the first time they get into underwater combat. (It’s still a real danger, but not a present one.)
Workarounds
Various races can either breathe underwater, or (such as Lizardfolk and Tortles) can hold their breath for longer, as defined in their stat blocks.
Wild Shape and Polymorph can change folk into creatures that can swim or breathe in water.
Anything that magically gives you a Swimming speed will be useful in the above.
Water Breathing is a spell that literally lets you breathe underwater for 8 hours. It’s a 3rd level for Druids, Rangers, Sorcerers, and Wizards, can affect up to ten people, doesn’t require concentration, and can be done as a ritual. Alternately, Water Walk (same parameters) lets you walk on water and not worry about having to breathe it.
Wait, that’s it?
But aren’t there some classic tropes that these rule ignore?
Yes.
“A Drowning Viking, possibly Olav Trygvason (968-1000) of Norway at the Battle of Svold on 9th September 1000”
There’s no provision for heavy armor or a full backpack dragging you to the bottom, etc.; if you are strong enough to wear it, you are strong enough to swim in it (handwaves) … which is good, because it takes 5 minutes to remove heavy armor.
There are no provisions for using up breath faster if you are (slowly) flailing about with your greatsword instead sitting still and preserving oxygen.
Again, largely this is because D&D is a crappy physics (and biology) simulator, and intentionally so. The game design thought seems to be “Does this complication take away from the fun? Does it mean extra calculations, rolls, and otherwise bogging-down of the game? Then simplify or eliminate it.”
(Note to self: if I ever decide this is too simplified, this site has some interesting homebrewed additions.)
Any changes here with 5.5e?
The rules in 5.5e (2024) for swimming (and drowning) aren’t changed too much from 5e (2014).
One place there is more clarification seems to be with when these swimming rules come into play for movement and combat. The Difficult Terrain definition notes it applies in waterbetween shin-deep and waist-deep. Water any deeper than that you are arguably either swimming (feet off the bottom) or most of your body is underwater and your movement (for moves and combat) are hampered enough that the swimming rules start to apply.
While you’re swimming, each foot of movement costs 1 extra foot (2 extra feet in Difficult Terrain). You ignore this extra cost if you have a Swim Speed and use it to swim. At the DM’s option, moving any distance in rough water might require a successful DC 15 STRength (Athletics) check.
That’s pretty close to 5e, if a bit more simplified.
The drowning rules are a little different (though, as before, they come up under Suffocation as a Hazard):
A creature can hold its breath for a number of minutes equal to 1 plus its CONstitution modifier (minimum of 30 seconds) before suffocation begins.
So far, so same.
When a creature runs out of breath or is choking, it gains 1 Exhaustion level at the end of each of its turns. When a creature can breathe again, it removes all levels of Exhaustion it gained from suffocating.
Here’s where things get interesting (and simpler in a useful way) in 5.5e. Rather than have a final CON-based seconds to get to air and then dropping to 0 hp, you “simply” start accruing Exhaustion each round, i.e.,
Your D20 Test rolls are reduced by (2 x Exhaustion level)
Your Speed is reduced by (5′ x Exhaustion level)
This is fully reversable, instantly, upon being able to breathe again.
But, if it goes on 6 rounds (6 levels of Exhaustion), you are dead. Not dying. Dead. No Death Saves or Stabilizing.
Simpler. Not necessarily more or less dangerous.
The rules on combat underwater remain the same as far as disadvantages and weapon / range limitations if you don’t have a Swim Speed. I could not find any commentary on spellcasting underwater, but presumably it is much the same.
There is still no distinction made for hauling around massive weight or armor and how well you can swim (or sink). There is also still no modification in the drowning rules for minimizing activity.
Deep Water swimming has been modified (DMG 68). Only a 100 foot level is specified; after swimming an hour at that depth or below, creatures without a Swim speed need to succeed on a DC 10 CONstitution Save or take a level of Exhaustion.
If water is particularly “frigid” (DMG 68), then creatures can be immersed in it up to CON minutes; after that, each minute requires a DC 10 CONstitution Save or take a level of Exhaustion.
5e has a system that interestingly modular, providing for a lot of flexibility, and occasional confusion.
5e has also given terminology a big stir, so sometimes folk (especially those coming from earlier editions, homebrews, or variant systems) get a little mixed up as to what’s being referred to as what. So forgive me if I digress a bit first …
Everything starts with Abilities
Abilities from a character sheet
Abilities are your five primary statistics (and some people still refer to them as your stats):
STRength, measuring physical power
DEXterity, measuring agility
CONstitution, measuring endurance
INTelligence, measuring reasoning and memory
WISdom, measuring perception and insight
CHArisma, measuring force of personality
Everything you as a character can do stems from or is primarily influenced by these stats. (And, just to start there, I remember back in the good old days when they were a bit more nonsensically ordered STR, INT, WIS, DEX, CON, and CHA — so D&D has shown a bit of rational evolution there.)
Your level as a Player Character in each of these Abilities is from 3-20, though, depending on how you build them at character creation, it’s rare you’ll start off above 18.
(And, yes, I am also old enough to remember when stats capped at 18 — or, rather, went to 18 plus a fraction. Strange days.)
In many ways, the actual Ability Score is meaningless; it’s the resulting Modifier that ultimately impacts the game mechanics, as modifying D20 die rolls associated with that Ability. Indeed, many character sheets emphasize the Modifier vs the Score (which begs the issue of why, aside from legacy / nostalgia reasons, we still need the Ability Score itself any more … but that’s a change for the next edition).
You could (and some systems can) run quite neatly with just these Abilities dividing up all your capability into six buckets. But since the golden days of D&D, people have wanted a bit more.
Skills!
Skills from a Character Sheet
Those Abilities are a bit broad for the level of tactical and adventuring crunchiness that D&D players consider the sweet spot. So long ago, lists of skills were developed that people could specialize in through some mechanic, influenced primarily by the Ability they are associated with.
So, for example, Sleight of Hand is a very different skill than, say, Acrobatics. Both are clearly associated with the Dexterity (“measuring agility”), but you can easily think of someone who would be mediocre at one but dazzling in the other.
The modifier on the D20 roll for any given skill starts with the modifier for the Ability it’s associated with. You can also have special Proficiency in a given skill (usually from your Class, or from a Feat, or even from a Race), which means you add your Proficiency Bonus in.
So with the character in question, when they make an Acrobatics roll, they roll a D20, add in their DEXterity Ability Modify (+1), and then (because it’s checked off as a Proficiency), their Proficiency Bonus (+2) — 1d20+3.
Mixing and Matching Abilities and Skills
You will almost never see a Skill written in official material like this:
Athletics
Instead, it will be written as
Strength (Athletics)
But why? Doesn’t Athletics imply Strength?
Not necessarily.
There are a couple of ways of looking at this. You are actually always rolling these checks on an Ability — this is a STRength check, this is a CONstitution check, this is an INTelligence check, etc. The Skills listed are only to help you narrow down which Ability you are rolling (“Oh, I’m trying Sleight of Hand, so this is going to be a DEX-based roll) or to indicate a specific proficiency in the technical aspects of what is essentially a Sub-ability, a Skill.
Okay, well, clearly, Athletics is going to be the technical Skill set. But what the Ability is is what actually matters. This isn’t a race across the pool where STRength is the deciding factor. This is going to be all about endurance … so you’re going to be using CONstitution as the active Ability.
So, yes, you will be rolling Constitution (Athletics).
To use the character sheet bits above, you’ll make a roll of 1d20 + 3 (CON modifier) + 2 (Proficiency Bonus for Athletics), for a 1d20 + 5.
(Yes, yes, the character in question has the same STRength and CONstitution, which means the die roll is the same in this one particular case, but I hope you see the point.)
So, yeah, sure, STRength normally powers Athletics, and WISdom makes sense with Perception … but it doesn’t have to be that way. The rules treat those as the default. If you can make a cogent argument for it to the DM, you can use any ability to power a skill, such that the skill roll becomes:
(If you are not using a VTT like Roll20, you’ll have to calculate this manually, but it’s pretty easy.)
This is both good story-tellilng — using the appropriate Ability for a given test — but it’s also something the the Players can use to their advantage (leaning into their stronger Abilities) or the DM can use to mix things up a bit.
Using Strength for Intimidation
As another example, from the PHB, you usually use CHArisma as the basis for your Intimidation rolls — bringing your force of personality to play in beating down their resistance. But if you’re some savagely-strong looking barbarian, maybe you just show your target how you can snap them in half as easily as this thick log waiting to go into the fireplace, with a Strength (Intimidation) roll.
Your intent here is still to intimidate, but rather through word and body language (CHArisma), you’re using force of sinew (STRength). But Intimidation as a skill has its own goals and techniques; if you have proficiency in them, you should be able to use them different ways.
Indeed, I can easily imagine other types of intimidation —
Intelligence (Intimidation): showing off your vast knowledge to cow a sage
Constitution (Intimidation): demonstrating how nonchalant you are standing in a bed of coals to make your torturers quail
Dexterity (Intimidation): plucking flies out of the air to daunt some fellow thieves
Yes, you could argue in that last case what you are really doing is Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) — but it’s not, because your purpose in the scene is not actually to catch flies, but to completely unnerve the person you are engaged with, to break their will and intent: thus Intimidation.
This Reddit thread has some other fun examples. If you’ve got a high CONstitution, you could argue for using it with a variety of non-CON-associated Skills:
Constitution (Deception): You jump into near-freezing water, but want to convince the others to Come on in,it’s fine, no, no, not cold at all, do you see me shivering?
Constitution (Sleight of Hand): You have the duke’s large signet ring hidden in your mouth, but the guards are checking everyone. Can you swallow it without anyone noticing?
Constitution (Animal Handling): Wrangling … that damned … cat … who is very liberal … with use of … teeth and claws …
Not all combinations are easy to think of examples for (Strength (History) … maybe something about how you were the only person back at the monastery strong enough to get Abbot Shang’s Book of Exceedingly Great Dimensions down from the shelf to study from it). But figuring out a way to lean a higher Ability into a Skill roll can give you a real boost … if you can talk the DM into it.
So does 5.5e change any of this?
The new 5.5e (2024) release includes some changes, but they are mostly cosmetic.
Unlike 5e, the default 5.5e character sheet [PHB 34] now lists skills under the abilities they are usually associated with. I think that’s a nice improvement.
In combat, the skills associated with some of the abilities get their own named Action types:
Influence – for usually CHArisma-based skills (plus WISdom (Animal Handling).)
Mixing and matching Abilities and Skills is still included in the rules, in a sidebar on PHB 14.
Each skill proficiency is associated with an ability check. For example, the Intimidation skill is associated with Charisma. In some situations, the DM might allow you to apply your skill proficiency to a different ability check. For example, if a character tries to intimidate someone through a show of physical strength, the DM might ask for a Strength (Intimidation) check rather than a Charisma (Intimidation) check. That character would make a Strength check and add their Proficiency Bonus if they have Intimidation proficiency.
One thing that strikes me is that, in a lot of areas, 5.5e has pivoted from rolling against Ability (Skill) to just rolling Ability checks, while at the same time really focusing on Proficiency as what reflects greater skills (this was mechanically true in 5e, as well, but not quite as prominently).
It’s also moved from a lot of contests(a character and opponent both roll their skill, the one with the highest final number wins) to checksof Skills and Abilities against a fixed DC. If that seems weird, though, consider that that is exactly what normal combat is (rolling a check of your weapon skill against a fixed AC, rather than a contest where the defending character gets to roll to dodge or deflect the blow).
Rolling skills to get something done can be a tense moment. The whole campaign might depend on how well you can sneak, or spot someone sneaking, or open that lock, or disarm that trap.
And, since a D20 provides a linear distribution of results, it’s quite possible to fail that roll.
Then what?
How to Succeed at Skill Rolls while Trying A Whole Bunch
So, what is a Skill (Ability) Check? Well, per PHB 174:
To make an Ability Check, roll a d20 and add the relevant Ability modifier. As with other d20 rolls, apply bonuses and penalties, and compare the total to the DC. If the total equals or exceeds the DC, the ability check is a success — the creature overcomes the challenge at hand. Otherwise, it’s a failure, which means the character or monster makes no progress toward the objective or makes progress combined with a setback determined by the GM..
What happens when you fail a Skill / Ability roll? Can you try again? How many times?
Can you try, try again?
Interestingly enough, there’s no easy answer there. I’ve read DMs assert that they only let a single roll happen; if you fail, that shows it’s just not doable (by you, at least). I’ve read others say you can only retry if the circumstances or your approach explicitly changes.
(I’ve also seen guidance that rolls should only be asked for if the results of failure are significant or interesting. So there’s that, too.)
To my mind, a lot depends on what it is you are trying to do (duh). As much as D&D tries to make all skills identical in their structure and use, they really aren’t. Some skills, in their application or in the circumstances at hand, lend themselves more or less to retries.
“I search the room.” Okay, you blew your Perception roll. Can you search it again, search it harder, search it in a way you didn’t before? Sure. Tell me what you’re doing differently.
“I try to convince the guard to let us pass.” Okay, you blew your Persuasion roll. Can you try again? Well, certainly not the same way or with the same line of argument. I mean, if she didn’t believe the Captain sent you when you said it once, she’s not going to believe it a second time.
“I try to remember my History to see if I know of the dread Egnarts.” If you fail, chances are you’re not going to succeed in “remembering” again, without explaining a very different approach.
In some cases, letting an attempt be retried is just fine. In other cases, retrying at a Disadvantage seems to make sense (“Oh, did I say the Captain? I meant the Duke, my uncle …”).
What does “failure” mean?
We tend to think of “failure” as “What I asked for didn’t happen.”
The lock didn’t pop open.
The guard wasn’t convinced.
The mule refuses to move.
But look at that definition of an Ability Check again, particularly on the “failure” part:
Otherwise, it’s a failure which means the character or monster makes no progress toward the objective …
Okay, that’s what we usually think of failure like.
… or makes progress combined with a setback determined by the DM.
Which is very modern “failing forward” game design for something like D&D, and, frankly, is something I never thought of for this system — and it’s something that makes sense, esp. if (a) the DM wants to move things along, and/or (b) you just barely missed your roll.
You hear a couple of tumblers in the lock move, but it doesn’t open; your next attempt will be at Advantage … but that will take more time.
You got the lock open … and the door opens wide, to reveal the room full of guards.
You got the lock open, but broke your favorite lockpick, putting you at Disadvantage in picking locks until you can get it replaced.
The guard grudgingly lets you pass, but sends a runner to check with the Captain, just in case.
The mule moves, but quite intentionally steps on your foot in doing so.
Those are all legitimate things for me as the DM to do (or you as the player to suggest).
Can’t I just “Take 10” or “Take 20”?
So those are D&D 3.5e rules, but 5.0 kinda-sorta has them. Kinda-sorta.
Taking 10 in 3.5e usually just meant “Act like I rolled a 10” so as to avoid the chance of a low roll (when a high roll wouldn’t really be needed).
This is mathematically the equivalent of using a Passive Skill in 5e. Which seems a little weird (“I’m searching the room … passively”).
When you have plenty of time (generally 2 minutes for a skill that can normally be checked in 1 round, one full-round action, or one standard action), you are faced with no threats or distractions, and the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 20. In other words, eventually you will get a 20 on 1d20 if you roll enough times. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, just calculate your result as if you had rolled a 20.
Taking 20 means you are trying until you get it right, and it assumes that you fail many times before succeeding. Taking 20 takes twenty times as long as making a single check would take.
Since taking 20 assumes that the character will fail many times before succeeding, if you did attempt to take 20 on a skill that carries penalties for failure, your character would automatically incur those penalties before he or she could complete the task. Common “take 20” skills include Escape Artist, Open Lock, and Search.
5e doesn’t have this … precisely. But on DMG 237, “Multiple Ability Checks,” there’s a “Take 20”-like mechanism:
Sometimes a character fails an ability check and wants to try again. In some cases, a character is free to do so; the only real cost is the time it takes. With enough attempts and enough time, a character should eventually succeed at the task. To speed things up, assume that a character spending ten times the normal amount of time needed to complete a task automatically succeeds at that task. However, no amount of repeating the check allows a character to turn an impossible task into a successful one.
So in cases where failure doesn’t incur a penalty (except burning time), you can spend ten times the normal amount of time (ask your DM for a SWAG) and just assume a success if the task is possible (which I read to mean, if rolling a 20 on the skill would allow it to succeed). This is a bit looser and more cinematic than 3.5’s rule, but there you go.
It does mean that, if the party is willing to take the time, the DM can dispense with Perception rolls in each room and just say, “After about an hour, you find the hidden compartment under the book case. And, no, that doesn’t count as a Short Rest.”
Is that a good thing? That’s up to you to decide.
Is there any change or clarification in 5.5e?
A bit. The intent is still there, it’s just made a little looser.
On DMG 28, “Trying Again”
Sometimes a character fails an Ability check and wants to try again. In many cases, failing an Ability check makes it impossible to attempt the same thing again. For some tasks, however, the only consequence of failure is the time it takes to attempt the task again. For example, failing a Dexterity check to pick a lock on a treasure chest doesn’t mean the character can’t try again, but each attempt might take a minute.
If failure has no consequences and a character can try and try again, you can skip the Ability check and just tell the player how long the task takes. Alternatively, you can call for a single Ability check and use the result to determine how long it takes for the character to complete the task.
The language is similar; the biggest difference (besides leaning on how it might not work) is that in 5e you could just assume “ten times the normal amount of time” would succeed, and in 5.5e, the DM gets to make the duration up.
This is another thing that can engender confusion until it gets spelled out plainly, especially since it’s about something that has changed over various D&D editions, varies with other D20-based games, and has been house-ruled for eons.
What happens when you roll a natural (that’s the face showing on the die) 20 on a d20? What happens when you roll a natural 1?
When is a die roll a different die roll?
There are, in 5e, three types of d20 rolls:
Attack rolls — rolls you make to successfully hit with an attack (against a given Armor Class (AC)).
Ability Checks — rolls you make to check against an ability or skill to see if you succeed in your attempt (against a given Difficulty Class (DC)).
Saving Throws — rolls you make to avoid or minimize the effect of a spell or other environmental hazard (against a given DC).
These are all done with a d20, but, despite that, each is treated independently in the rules.
For example, the Rogue’s Reliable Talent class ability (PHB 96) says “Whenever you make an ability check that lets you add your proficiency bonus, you can treat a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10.” That applies only to Ability Checks, not Saves or Attacks.
a naturally rolled20 is always a hit (and a critical hit, at that), regardless of modifiers or the target’s Armor Class.
a naturally rolled1 is always a miss, regardless of modifiers or the target’s Armor Class. (5e does not have a “fumble” rule.)
This auto-hit or auto-miss rule, though, does not apply to Saves or Ability Checks. For example, a natural 20 on a Saving Throw does not guarantee success. In fact, it just means that you have met or beat any DC of 20 or below. If the DC is 25, it doesn’t, Rules-As-Written, mean a thing other than you did not save.
That said …
Most DMs will do something to recognize a natural 20 (especially if it’s called to their attention), and sometimes a natural 1 as well, on a Save or Ability Check, even if the RAW doesn’t call for it.
This might be as simple as something narrated, calling out (without game effect) the natural beauty of the thing you did that you rolled a nat 20 on … or the gob-smacking ineptitude of the thing you did that you rolled a nat 1 on.
You dive for cover from the dragon’s breath, but mis-judge and fly through its center instead. You take [the standard] damage, but you can hear the dragon actually laughing at you.
Sometimes they may even given you a partial success for that nat 20.
You don’t manage a clean landing — but you’re on your feet, even if you’re going to be at half-speed next round.
or
Your valiant effort doesn’t succeed, but it came closer than you thought it would — take an Inspiration.
But don’t count on that, unless the DM is house-ruling something of that sort as a normal case.
What about in 5.5e (2024)?
Not a lot has changed in 5.5e, besides some nomenclature.
Ability checks, attack rolls, or saving throws, all of which involve rolling a D20, are now called “D20 Tests.” Certain spells and circumstances are called out in the rules for affecting D20 Tests, and thus they affect those three different types of rolls.
That said, crits still only happen with a nat 20 on an attack roll, and a nat 1 on an attack roll is still always a miss. Rolling a nat 1 or nat 20, as with 5e, has no rules-based effect if you are rolling for ability checks or saves.
This discussion has very little Rules-as-Written (RAW) basis; RAW really don’t address this.
This actually doesn’t come up very often, unless you have flying characters (insert cat hissing here). But sooner or later, at the very least you will encounter flying enemies — or else you’ll have people shooting down (or up) at you from a ledge in a big chamber, or things like that.
And inevitably the question will be asked: “How far away are you?”
D&D 5e has, as a design goal, relative simplicity, at least from older editions. It’s very easy to add a lot of complexity over a relatively niche cases, but this really does feel like something that we should be able to come up with a way to approach it. It strains (my) suspension of disbelief to ignore altitude differences, and it’s just the sort of thing that players will raise at the moment it becomes contentious that you probably don’t want to improv.
So let’s consider a couple of home-brew approaches, since the question of how to deal with it is, again, not addressed in RAW that I’ve been able to find.
How far away are you?
Let’s assume you are:
shooting at something that is
A feet away from you horizontally, and
B feet above you (or below you) vertically.
For range purposes, what is the actual distance C you are firing/throwing?
1. Pythagoras
Huzzah for ancient Greek geometers! The actual distance C is the square root of (A2 + B2 ).
This is geometrically accurate, but also requires a pocket calculator (or an online right angle calculator).
2. Diagonals
This is actually a pretty clever workaround: C = (A + (B/2)).
This “works” from extending the grid system and using the DMG 252 optional rules for diagonal movement (treat the first diagonal as 5 feet, the second as 10 feet, etc.).
In my games, we don’t use that style of movement because it’s a PitA and the basic grid rules on PHB 192 are fine enough — but for these purposes it makes for an easy head calculation.
But there’s a problem here we’re not talking about (yet)
This is all cool if you are just shooting lasers (or firing spells) — weapons that ignore gravity.
But a lot of these use cases are for when you twang with your bow, or throw something (often pointy).
Gravity is your enemy if you are twanging/throwing upward. It’s your friend, to a degree, when twanging/throwing downward.
Amusing memes aside, the high ground does carry an advantage. But beyond that, aiming at things above you (or below you) isn’t something that most people train on.
So that brings us another suggestion:
3. Simple Math
If you are twanging/throwing at something higher than you, the effective distance C is (A + B).
If you are twanging/throwing at something lower than you, the effective distance C is the greater of A or B.
This takes into account that gravity is a bitch (harder uphill ranges), while keeping things easy and rewarding the high ground.
4. Just fudge something
We’ve focused on figuring out range. A lot of tables just ignore that aspect, count the horizontal squares/hexes/distance (to see how it fits into the weapon range factors), and then apply a modifier to the attack based on high ground or low ground. In 3.5e, height advantage provided a +1. Some tables, in 5e, just apply Advantage for being higher, or Disadvantage for being lower (a rather extreme plus/minus, but 5e is about simplicity).
That’s a bit of a fudge that gives some feel and is easy to do, but it strikes me as a little too simple.
Let’s Test It
Target
1. Pythagoras
2. Diagonals
3. Simple Math
100 ft away, 30 ft up
104
115
130
30 ft away, 100 ft up
104
115
130
100 ft away, 80 ft up
128
140
180
100 ft away, 100 ft down
141
150
100
Which is “best”? Whichever one is easiest and feels right. My house rule inclination is to go with Option 3 for everything, or, if you are feeling a bit more adventuresome, use Option 3 for thrown/twanged attacks, Option 2 for magic attacks.
Note that this affects the Bad Guys as much as it does you.
How about 5.5e?
The 5.5e (2024) rules really don’t change any of this. You can find plenty of discussion about house rules for this through your favorite search engine.
There are a number of rules that deal with the basic question of “How do I get past that guy?” Note that all the below observations are caveated by class or racial powers that may say otherwise. Monks and rogues and some smaller creatures get special abilities to do some of this stuff.
Note also that if you use any of these, you still run the risk of an Attack of Opportunityif, once past, you continue running beyond someone’s reach.
Also, if the either of the opponents here is one of those that does damage to a melee attacker “within five feet,” I would as DM incur that penalty to these maneuvers as well (even if they are not, strictly speaking, melee attacks). In other words, if you are shoving, shoving past, or even tumbling around that flaming guy, you’re going to get burned (and if it’s the flaming guy trying to move through an occupied hex, the target’s going to get burned, regardless of whether the attempt was successful).
The Magic of the Five Foot Square
Guys in a couple of five foot squares
Okay, if you are doing Theater of the Mind, more power to you. I run on a 5-foot square grid.
Obviously a Medium creature (as most players and many opponents are) does not fill the entire square, like some sort of gelatinous cube. Instead, the square represents what war-gamers would call a “zone of control.” A player in a 5-foot square can be anywhere (and, in a sort of quantum fashion, everywhere) within it. Even if you are leaning waaaaaaaay over to one side to shoot arrows at that goblin behind partial cover, you are still blocking that orc from traipsing through the other side of your 5-foot square.
The basic rules of 5e (and D&D in general) is that, with some identified exceptions and weird edge cases, opposed beings cannot occupy the same 5-foot square. So, other than slaying that enemy in your way, how can you get past them?
Here is a summary of the ideas spelled out below …
If you are _____ than your opponent …
… then consider _____.
Bigger
Overrunning
Bigger (a lot) or Smaller (a lot)
Moving Through
Stronger
Shoving, Shoving Aside, or Overrunning
More Agile
Tumbling Past
Moving Through
You can move through a hostile creature’s space only if the creature is at least two Sizes larger or smaller than you. Remember that, even in those cases, another creature’s space is Difficult Terrain for you.
Cost: Difficult Terrain movement.
Shoving
There are a couple of possibilities here — a bog-normal Shove attack, or an optional Shove Aside.
Note that in neither case do you need to worry about “Difficult Terrain” as you are never deemed to be in the same square as the enemy (don’t think about it too hard).
If we think of You (Y) doing one of these attacks against the Enemy (E), here is where they would end up with a Shove (S) or an (optional) Shove Aside (A)
S S S
A E A
Y
Shove
You can use a Shove as an attack in the round, pushing the target away from you 5 feet (think of the offensive line in a football game). Once you push them away, you can step into their space and then beyond.
For a Shove, the target can’t be more than one Size larger. You as the shover make a Strength (Athletics) roll vs. the target’s (choice of) Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics).
You could also knock them Prone with a Shove attack but that doesn’t clear out the space for you to move through.
Cost: One Attack.
Shove Aside
This is an Optional Rule on DMG 272: Rather than using a Shove to move someone back (or Prone), you use Shove to move them to the side.
Essentially, this is a more difficult Shove attack (shifting someone at a 90 degree angle), with the same skill comparison, so you as the shover roll at Disadvantage. If successful, the opponent is shoved 5 feet to the side, meaning you can move through their square at no additional movement penalty.
As a DM, the added difficulty seems quite fair and I wouldn’t hesitate to allow this Optional Rule.
Cost: One Attack.
Tumbling Past
This is another Optional Rule, so check with your DM first. DMs, this can provide color, but it can also make your sneaky rogue types (who probably have a high DEX) a lot more dangerous.
This can be found in the DMG, page 272: As an Action or Bonus Action, you roll Dexterity (Acrobatics) vs the Dexterity (Acrobatics) of the one you’re trying to Tumble past; if you win, you can move through (but not stop in) the hostile creature’s space (as difficult terrain).
There’s no specific penalty for failure here — except that you’ve burned an Action or Bonus Action, successful or not.
Costs: Action or Bonus Action; Difficult Terrain movement.
Overrunning
Yet another Optional Rule, on DMG page 272, this is basically just shoving your way past the opponent (or using your Strength to do a Move Through).
As an Action or Bonus Action, you roll a Strength (Athletics) check vs the defender’s Strength (Athletics). You are at Advantage if of a larger Size, or Disadvantage if of a smaller Size. If successful, you can move through the square (as Difficult terrain).
Cost: Action or Bonus Action; Difficult Terrain movement
But what about Jumping Over them?
The Jumping rules really don’t allow this. Or don’t work well with it.
First, High Jumps don’t help, since they are only up-and-down, according to the rules. (Yes, Olympic High Jumps involve some horizontal distance, though often not much, I don’t think anyone is envisioning jumping backwards over an orc and then landing on their own back on a huge fluffy pad.)
Second — this is not an easy thing to do. Even under highly controlled non-combat situations.
You just can’t jump high enough on a Long Jump to reliably get over an opponent’s head. The height you achieve on a Long Jump, with a successful Strength (Athletics) check vs DC10, is (distance/4) feet; assuming the space a Medium creature controls space is not just 5×5, but 5x5x5, you would need a distance jumped of 20 feet (20/4=5) to get past them (i.e., with a Running Long Jump, that means you’d need a STR of 20).
Magic might help: a Jump spell (or Ring of Jumping) triples your jumping distance, thus your someone with a STR of, say 16, would theoretically be able to Jump 48 feet, clearing 12 feet high …
… although the irritating Jumping rules still, even with a spell, restrict your Jumping distance to your Speed. If your speed is 30, you can only jump 30 feet (or 20 if you are doing a Running Long Jump that takes a 10 foot run-up). That still lets you clear that 5 foot height (20/4), and it means you only need a Strength 10 to (barely) jump over an opponent. (Speed magic would help here even more.)
That said … is a 5 foot height being the vertical control zone actually a real thing? Eh … given that D&D tends to be a bit vertically challenged in terms of accommodating things that are above ground level, you could argue it for most Medium characters (esp. as weapons and armor aren’t generally pointed at / oriented toward / limber regarding upward attacks). If you remember the Golden Rule that D&D is not a physics simulator (it’s not even a combat simulator), it kinda-sorta works fine.
Since you would be flying over the enemy’s head, there is no Difficult Terrain consideration. Thank goodness for that.
Taller creatures will tend to be Large in Size, and thus fill up (or control) a 10-foot square space (a lot more to jump over), but even if they don’t, maybe the best way to handle it is with a higher DC on that Strength (Athletics) check (DM discretion).
What does happen if that Strength (Athletics) check to jump over something fails? In theory, just as with a non-opponent Long Jump, the jump fails at that point, and you end up, probably Prone, in the square in front of the enemy you tried to jump over. But we’ll leave those esoterica as an exercise for the student.
Sliding past/under, or jumping up-over, a bad guy is a pretty bad-ass cool move, the sort of thing that will have characters (or their players) bragging about over beers for months or years to come.
Which means, on an exceptional basis (e.g., in a boss fight) the DM should probably be willing to bend the rules at least a bit to allow such an attempt, even of the numbers don’t quite work out. The rules are there to let you know what should normally work and what normally shouldn’t. But ultimately, that judgment belongs to the DM — and a balls-to-the-wall unexpected heroic attempt … should get at least a bit of latitude.
Any changes here with 5.5e?
Why yes. Yes there are — fairly significant ones.
First, though it doesn’t apply specifically to this post’s topic, while in 5e moving through a friendly character’s square was considered Difficult Terrain, in 5.5e, it’s not — just a normal space to move through. This makes stack-ups at doorway a lot less painful.
Similarly, you can move through, at speed square of a Tiny creature.
It remains Difficult Terrain to move through the square of an Incapacitated creature (which as a house rule we include dead bodies), or of a creature that is two Sizes larger/smaller than you.
While in 5e you could not end movement in the same square of another creature, 5.5e allows it if it is an involuntary action (e.g., being hurled there telekinetically). If you find yourself unwillingly end your turn in such a square, you are Prone unless you are Tiny or are a larger Size than the other creature. Even if you go prone, the other creature is not affected unless it ends its turn in the same square.
A Shove is now a form of Unarmed Strike in 5.5e. Rather than doing an Athletics vs. Athletics/Acrobatics contest (5.5e really doesn’t like contests), instead, the shover just says they are doing so, and the target must make a
STRength or DEXterity Save (their choice) vs. DC = (8 + shover’s STRength mod + shover’s Proficiency Bonus)
A Shove is only possible if the target is no more than one Size larger than the shover.
The new 5.5e rules make no mention of the previously optional Overrun or Tumble Past or Shove Aside rules. The same is true for a lot of the Optional Rules in 5e’s DMG; whether these are a permanent simplification or wil be reintroduced in a later supplement remains unknown.
I grew up in the era where you always had a mage in the party who took Detect Magic to spot the glowy magic items, and then Identify to suss out what it is.
5e has simplified this a great deal, though much of the info is semi-hidden in the DMG (p. 136). There are several ways of getting at whether an item has magical properties and, if so, what they are:
As the DMG says, the fastest and easiest way to reveal an item’s properties is with the Identify spell. Note that Identify can be done as a Ritual, so any wizard, bard, or cleric of divination can do it, taking 10 minutes and not burning a spell slot. If you don’t know the spell, then 10gp will hire someone (in an appropriate locale) to cast it for you.
You can also focus on a magic item with which you are in physical contact during a Short Rest. I usually require the characters to sort of wield the item more or less like they would — wear the boots, hold ring in your hand, wave the sword around a bit. At the end of the rest, you have learned the item’s properties and how to invoke them. This is the most common method, as it is relatively cheap and easy.
You can also try to do an Intelligence (Arcana) check to see if something about the object can identify it (“The elves often put wings on the leather of Boots of Flying” or “That is the symbol for the Orcish God of Fire” or “Rings that chime with that particular note are most likely magic, from the lost realm of Midoria”). This is much quicker than the Short Rest option, but likely less complete. (Some suggestions on how this might work.)
Alternately, you can guess from clues on the item itself, or can just start wielding it and figure out how it works.
Note that for scrolls, a tiny sip will let you know what it does without it (most likely) having an effect on you.
Attunement
Some magical items require more than just identification and working instructions to invoke its magical powers. Instead, they are of sufficient power that they require a mystical bond be created between the wielder and the item called Attunement.
If an item requires this, it is listed with the item. Until such an item is Attuned, its magical properties do not manifest (an unattuned +3 Vorpal Sword is just a very cool looking normal sword in combat). Note that some items can have a prerequisite (e.g., class, race) for Attunement.
Attunement takes an additional ShortRest (beyond the initial identification), in physical contact and focusing on the item. Practice use of or meditation over the item might be helpful here. At the end of the rest, “the creature gains an intuitive understanding of how to activate any magical properties of the item, including any necessary command words.” More complex or powerful items may require additional Short Rests or presentation of circumstances where an ability manifests. (“You suddenly feel no fear of the flames, realizing they are not harming you but humming softly.”)
An item can be attuned to only one person at a time, and a person can only attune to three unique items at a time.
Attunement ends if prerequisites are no longer met, if the item is over 100 feet away for at least 24 hours, if the owner dies, or if another creature attunes to the item. You can also voluntarily drop an attunement with another Short Rest.
Spell-casting items
Items that allow spells to be cast are cast at the lowest possible spell and caster level, don’t expend any spell slots, and require no components (unless otherwise specified). Rules for range, casting time, duration, and concentration apply (again, unless otherwise specified).
For items that depend on the user’s spellcasting ability, if you don’t actually have a native spellcasting ability (e.g., a Rogue with Use Magic Device), the ability modifier is +0 but your Proficiency Bonus does apply.
So what about in 5.5e?
Again, things are pretty much the same between 5e (2014) and 5.5e (2024), just organized differently or clarifying things a bit better..
TL;DR: Anything with magic items is expensive and difficult and unlikely under 5e.
For design reasons having to do with Bounded Accuracy and stuff like that, magic items — especially anything permanent, or anything to alter combat stats (TH, AC) — are rare as hen’s teeth in 5th Edition D&D.
The following is meant to provide guidelines. Bearing in mind how magic items can unbalance a campaign (especially weapons and armor with plusses), the DM should, as always, look for ways to make things fun and make things work for the story.
The rules on this stuff are something of a mess, to be honest, scattered in the PHB, the DMG, with major (optional) updates in XGE, which is what I’ll mostly follow (starting round XGE 134) None of it makes it easy along the lines of “I step into Ye Olde Magick Ytem Shoppe and …” For most stuff beyond the common, it’s a matter of searching out, then negotiating with buyers/sellers. This can literally take weeks.
It might be easier to go attack a dragon and check out their horde …
Buying the Easy Stuff
Okay, it’s not all that bad (or I won’t let it be in my game). Common stuff — the equivalent of picking up items at the local drug store — is relatively easy to find, if only because demand for it is there. In addition to XGE, I’ve found a very nice set of purchase tables (explained here) that discuss all sorts of purchasing (and selling) at different types of shops in different locals.
Some quick summaries of readily available items.
Rarity
Potion Cost (gp)
Scroll Cost (gp)
Common
50
Lvl 0 – 50
Lvl 1 – 100
Uncommon
250 – cities only
Lvl 2 – 250 – cities only
Lvl 3 – 500 – cities only
Rare
2500 – cities only, if at all
Lvl 4 – 2500 – cities only, if at all
Lvl 5 – 5000 – cities only, if at all
So, for example, a Common Potion of Healing is available at 50gp or so; quantities may be limited, and may vary by locale and shop. Especially as you get into Uncommon and Rare, the chances are high that stock and locations will be constrained.
Buying the Hard Stuff
Once you start getting beyond what gets stocked at the local Walgreens, it becomes a lot harder. Magic is rare, so finding it in a shop is situational (e.g., “Poor Drunken Bob used to be a mighty paladin. He finally hocked his +1 Greatsword with me last week. Only reason I’d carry something like that.”). It’s possible a shop in a trading town or small city might have something immediately on hand, but not guaranteed. The following is based largely on the “Downtime” rules in XGE.
Finding a magic item to purchase takes at least one workweek (5d) of effort, and 100gp in Expenses. You roll Charisma (Persuasion) to determine the quality of the seller, +1/extra work week you take, +1/extra 100gp you spend. (This also provides a wealthy lifestyle, so you can impress them). The roll is against the DC to Find in the table below.
Rarity
Level
Find
a seller
Asking Price (gp)
Example
Common
1+
DC 10
(1d6+1) * 10
Avg 45
Potion* of Healing 2d4+2
Uncommon
1+
DC 15
(1d6) * 100
Avg 350
Potion* of Greater Healing 4d4+4
Weapon +1 Adamantine Armor Wand of Magic Missiles
Rare
5+
DC 20
(2d10) * 1K
Avg 11K
Potion* of Superior Healing 8d4+8
Weapon +2
Armor +1 Wand of Fireballs
Very Rare
11+
DC 25
(1d4+1) * 10K
Avg 35K
Potion* of Supreme Healing 10d4+20
Weapon +3
Armor +2 Wand of Polymorph
Legendary
17+
DC 30
(2d6) * 25K
Avg 175K
Vorpal Sword
Armor +3 Ring of 3 Wishes
* Potions, scrolls, and other consumables cost only half price.
Rather than buying a (consumable) magic item, you can also hire a spell-caster to do something for you. Services for relatively common spells (Cure Wounds, Identify) are easy enough to find in a city, possibly even in a town, costing 10-50gp (plus any expensive material components) (PHB 159)
Temples are likely to provide the following spell services to the general public, assuming it’s a large enough establishment to have clerics that can do it:
Spell
Level
Cost (gp)
Cure Wounds
1
10
Prayer of Healing
2
50
Gentle Repose
2
50
Lesser Restoration*
2
50
Remove Curse
3
100
Revivify
3
400
Divination
4
210
Greater Restoration
5
450
Raise Dead
5
1000
*Outside of temples, itinerant priests can perform these.
Temples may perform other spells, but most likely only for adherents to the god in question.
Other magical services that can be relatively easily obtained outside of temples (in addition to the above spells that are not solely in cleric/adjacent classes):
Spell
Level
Cost (gp)
Identify
1
20
Prices, as with all things, can be affected by social interactions and local economic circumstances. I.e., you may be able to use Charisma (Persuasion) to sweet talk getting a desired service. On the other hand, if there is a major war or plague going on, such services may be swamped by the demand.
Selling a Magic Item
This is similar to buying one (and similarly comes from XGE, pp 133-34).
Unless you’re talking about something Common, most vendors can’t afford to buy such items, especially in smaller towns. You can pretty easily sell something to the local Walgreens that they regularly stock, or even something of the same rarity, but beyond that requires a vendor with resources, and likely some sort of Charisma (Persuasion) roll to assure the buyer of the quality.
For a more formal approach, you can find a buyer for one magic item by spending 1 work week and 25gp to spread the word. You can only sell one item at a time. Make a Charisma (Persuasion) check to determine the offer (you don’t have to take it).
Rarity
Base Price (gp) (half for consumables)
Common
100
Uncommon
400
Rare
4K
Very Rare
40K
Legendary
200K
DC Check Total
Offer % of base price
1-10
50%
11-20
100%
21+
150%
Every work week (5d) spent provides a 10% chance of a complication — also known as DM fun! Maybe someone else in the area is looking for such an item (making buyers eager to pick one up … or making buyers who have one want to get rid of the competition).
The net-net of all this is that magic items are not that much fun, certainly not that easily available with all the monster loot you keep finding, and you’ll have better luck knocking over dungeons until you find that +2 glaive you are looking for than to go to the local town and figuring to pick up such a thing at Ye Olde Magick Shoppe on the central square.
As a DM, if there’s something someone seems to need (or is jonesing for), it’s easier for me to tweak the treasure drops and provide it that way, than grinding folk through this.
So does 5.5e change any of this?
Since it’s based on the same underlying Bounded Accuracy principles, I wouldn’t expect many changes in 5.5e (2024). And, as far as I can tell at a quick glance, there aren’t that many. Mostly things are just reorganized and clarified. Higher level magic and things that increase damage or AC are rarer than hens’ teeth. A sidebar goes out of the way to say that the game is balanced without magic items, so they are in no way necessary.
Your players may disagree.
Chapter 7 of the DMG has a number of pages describing magic items (including how Potions and Scrolls work), commentary on magic item rarity and value, tracking of magic items and expectations of how many a party should have at given levels, crafting magic items, and a variety of magic items to use in the campaign. What I see looks much like the guidelines and tables in 5e.
The PHB has (in ch. 6) a nice new table on the cost of spellcasting services, as well as spell scroll crafting times and costs. Aside from that, things are pretty much the same.
So, as an example, the 6-foot tall Fighter with a Strength of 16 (+3 Bonus) can:
Do a Running Long Jump of 16 feet forward (clearing a 4 foot high obstacle)
Do a Standing Long Jump of 8 feet forward (clearing a 2 foot high obstacle)
Do a Running High Jump of 6 feet high (with a reach of up to 9 feet)
Do a Standing High Jump of 3 feet high (with a reach of up to 6 feet)
If you land in difficult terrain, you need a DC10 Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to not fall down prone.
You can extend your arms half your height above yourself during the jump. Thus, you can reach above you a distance equal to the (height of the jump ) + (1½ times your height). (See, putting a height value on your character sheet finally means something!)
Movement and Jumping
The RAW rule is, your jump in feet (up or across) counts against your Movement. That implies that if you have a Speed of 30, and you want to try and long jump 20 feet, you can only move 10 feet beforehand. (Jumps can’t split across turns.)
For example, the Jump spell or a Ring of Jumping lets you triple your Jump — so the Fighter described above would get a Running Long Jump of (16×3=) 48 feet, right? Nope. If their Speed is only 30, they can only Jump that far (or less, given the 10 foot lead-up to a Running Long Jump).
This limitation can be extended, though, through:
Speed magic (e.g., Haste, which doubles your Speed)
The Dash action (which effectively doubles your Speed for the turn).
There are cases with spells where it is possible to jump higher than 10 feet, which raises the question as to whether you then take damage upon landing again.
People can disagree, but I’d be inclined to say no, especially as magic is involved: if your (magically-enhanced) muscles can propel you upwards 20 feet, they can absorb the (same) shock in landing after returning to the ground. Because magic!
So, what about Jumping in 5.5e?
Pretty much all the same as with 5e for the basic jumps.
The Jump spell is handled a little differently, and more simply: each turn, the recipient of the spell can long jump 30 feet by spending 10 feet of movement. No calculations needed.
So Invisibility is often one of those “DM Bane” spells or abilities. Sneak past all the guards, unable to be targeted, overhearing all the secrets, scouting out all the ambushes. It can be really annoying, if not an OP way to get around a lot of hard work.
But (spoilers!) in D&D 5e, it’s … useful, but not game-breaking.
A creature you touch becomes invisible until the spell ends [Concentration, up to 1 hour]. Anything the target is wearing or carrying is Invisible as long as it is on the target’s person. The spell ends for a target that attacks or casts a spell.
Well, that sounds ominous. Uber-rogues! Hidden assassins! Parties just waltzing through dungeons!
An invisible creature is impossible to see without the aid of magic or a special sense. For the purpose of hiding, the creature is heavily obscured. The creature’s location can be detected by any noise it makes or any tracks it leaves.
Attack rolls against the creature have disadvantage, and the creature’s attack rolls have advantage.
I.e.,
Impossible to see without the aid of magic or a special sense (see below for more detail).
Heavily Obscured — a Hazard defined as “A Heavily Obscured area—such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage—blocks vision entirely. A creature effectively suffers from the Blinded condition when trying to see something in that area.”
It’s kind of funny to think of Invisibility as bringing an obscuring field (itself invisible) wrapped around you, but for purposes of the Hide action, that’s how it works. Being Heavily Obscured makes it much easier to Hide
An attacker is effectively “Blinded” while dealing with such a target (thus attacking at Disadvantage).
Still detectable by any noise it makes or any tracks it leaves (or any scent it gives off). A fairly common ruling, though not backed by RAW, is that this (under certain circumstances) represents a Disadvantage on Perception checks. Note that being detected doesn’t necessarily change the Disadvantage to attack such a target; in general, it mainly offers the opportunity to attack it.
“I have no visual or auditory or olfactory sign that there is anything near me. So I will not start swinging my sword.”
On the other hand, “I saw footsteps running through the puddle!” while not making you an easy target, does make your presence known and, potentially, able to be dealt with. “I hear a footstep, I see a splash in a puddle, I smell a familiar perfume — I swing, but I know I am at a Disadvantage.”
When you attack a target that you can’t see, you have Disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you’re guessing the target’s location or you’re targeting a creature you can hear but not see. If the target isn’t in the location you targeted, you automatically miss, but the DM typically just says that the attack missed, not whether you guessed the target’s location correctly.
And …
When a creature can’t see you, you have Advantage on attack rolls against it.
What does that mean, basically?
Attack Rolls against an invisible creature have Disadvantage
Attack Rolls by an invisible creature have Advantage.
Which is pretty awesome, but is not game-dominating.
The Devil Is in the Details
Delving deeper, the Invisibility spell:
Requires Concentration. That makes it pretty good for “I will make you invisible, go scout ahead.” Less so for “Here, let me make you invisible mid-battle, as long as I OH MY GOD THE FIREBALL!”
Unless you are an Invisible Stalker, where Invisibility an innate condition that doesn’t require Concentration. Such cases will are clearly stated in the rules.
Ends when an Invisible creature attacks or casts a spell.
Prepping for an attack doesn’t drop the Invisibility (we’re not talking Romulan warbirds here)
For a Rogue, that attack that drops the spell is probably a Sneak Attack, since that gives them Advantage.
For a multi-turn spell-casting, starting the spell breaks the Invisibility.
I see you!
So what might counter Invisibility (beyond footprints or being noisy)?
Blindsight: “A creature with blindsight can perceive its surroundings without relying on sight.”
Tremorsense: “A monster with tremorsense can detect and pinpoint the origin of vibrations within a specific radius, provided that the monster and the source of the vibrations are in contact with the same ground or substance “
Truesight: A creature with truesight can, out to a specific range, see in normal and magical darkness, and see Invisible creatures and objects.
In general, the above are either (a) creatures living belowground or in the dark or in the Underdark, or (b) beings of a higher order.
How about magic?
See Invisibility does what it says on the tin: “see invisible creatures and objects as if they were visible” for an hour. Similarly, the 10th Level Divination Wizard class feature, “The Third Eye,” giver an option to “See Invisibility: You can see invisible creatures and objects within 10 feet of you that are within line of sight.”
(Note that a 2020 Sage Advice Compendium defines line of sight (in another context) as requiring being able to see something, leading some people to assert that the Third Eye feature does nothing because it only sees invisible things that are in line of sight. But this is very clearly “that would be within line of sight if they were visible” in meaning, and ruling otherwise is untoward nitpicking of the SA’s statement in a different context.)
Dispel Magic will work against an Invisibility spell just fine … but you need to be able to target it, meaning (most likely) a Perception roll first, with the caveats above.
Create Water is also a good sneaky way to be able to perceive an invisible creature, either through raindrops or through puddles.
And, just as a general note, Area of Effect spells are an excellent tactical counter to Invisibility (think “Depth charges vs suspected enemy submarine”).
Surprise. If you’re Invisible when you roll Initiative, you have Advantage on the roll.
Concealed. You aren’t affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen unless the effect’s creator can somehow see you. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying is also concealed.
Attacks Affected. Attack rolls against you have Disadvantage, and your attack rolls have Advantage. If a creature can somehow see you, you don’t gain this benefit against that creature.
Which all seems reasonable, but doesn’t actually define Invisibility — it almost arguably (and some folk have made the argument) doesn’t really state you can’t be seen.
The Invisibility spell simply conveys the Invisible condition to its target(s), which remains until the end of the spell duration or “immediately after the target makes an attack roll, deals damage, or casts a spell.” Greater Invisibility even lets you do those things and still be Invisible.
The rules on the Invisible condition contain nothing about using other senses (hearing, smell) other than special visual abilities to overcome the Invisibility (it’s implied by still being able to Attack, even at Disadvantage). More importantly, the rules no longer equate Invisibility with being Heavily Obscured, even though the effects (Disadvantage on Attack) are similar.
You have the Blinded condition while trying to see something in a Heavily Obscured space.
Though in the “Exploration” section of the PHB, it does get some definition:
A Heavily Obscured area—such as an area with Darkness, heavy fog, or dense foliage—is opaque. You have the Blinded condition when trying to see something there.
With the Hide action, you try to conceal yourself. To do so, you must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity (Stealth) check while you’re Heavily Obscured or behind Three-Quarters Cover or Total Cover, and you must be out of any enemy’s line of sight; if you can see a creature, you can discern whether it can see you.
On a successful check, you have the Invisible condition while hidden. Make note of your check’s total, which is the DC for a creature to find you with a Wisdom (Perception) check.
You stop being hidden immediately after any of the following occurs: you make a sound louder than a whisper, an enemy finds you, you make an attack roll, or you cast a spell with a Verbal component.
This has three interesting implications:
First, if you have the Invisible condition, you don’t need to Hide because all Hide does is give you the Invisible condition.
Second, while we do not get anything explicit about how to detect a magically Invisible creature with other senses before they attack, do damage, or cast a spell, the Hide guidelines do provide some hints that could be used: a sound louder than a whisper, a suitable Perception roll against you, an attack, or a spell with a verbal component.
Third, the language that Hidden creatures gain the “Invisible” condition: does that mean the See Invisibility spell (“you see creatures and objects that have the Invisible condition as if they were visible”) or Truesight (“you see creatures and objects that have the Invisible condition”) should spot where people are hiding behind trees? RAW, it seems so, though that hardly appears to be the intent. Many people have spent a lot of time complaining about this.
But wait, there’s more. In a box under “Combat” and “Cover,” it discusses Unseen Enemies:
When you make an attack roll against a target you can’t see, you have Disadvantage on the roll. This is true whether you’re guessing the target’s location or targeting a creature you can hear but not see. If the target isn’t in the location you targeted, you miss.
When a creature can’t see you, you have Advantage on attack rolls against it.
If you are hidden when you make an attack roll, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses.
While that’s sort of focused on more conventionally hidden creatures, it also applies to magical invisibility as well.
Let’s mix it up even more.
In the order of combat rules on Initiative and Surprise, the rules read:
Surprise. If a combatant is surprised by combat starting, that combatant has Disadvantage on their Initiative roll. For example, if an ambusher starts combat while hidden from a foe who is unaware that combat is starting, that foe is surprised.
The term “hidden” isn’t defined anywhere. Is a person with the Invisible condition (from either a spell or from taking a Hide move) “hidden.” The “Surprise” section of the Invisible condition focuses just on the attacker getting Advantage on Init, not on this additional Disadvantage on Init for the defender.
In short, all of this in 5.5e is kind of a mess — things aren’t defined clearly, or where defined are simplified in unhelpful ways. The 5e rules had their own messy issues, but 5.5e has only made them, um, messier.
As a result, game tables will almost inevitably have to adopt some sort of house rules (probably borrowing from 5e rules). These could be as simple as defining the term “hidden,” acknowledging that in almost all Surprise situations there will be both Advantage and Disadvantage on Init, and some ground rules for how to actually detect Invisible creatures. Others might go for more elaborate revisions to the rules set.
So in addition to being a Tactical Guy, I’m a role-player, so I will likely emphasize those aspects in any game I can.
D&D is not a RP-heavy system by design; it’s originally derived from miniatures warfare gaming (which doesn’t reward someone running into the middle of the battlefield with a white flag to negotiate a truce), and the Experience Points that folk are incented after are for, frankly, killing things. This has “gotten better” over the years, but killing does still seem to be the best way to get XP. So, as a general rule, one does not hop into a D&D game expecting penetrating psycho-drama and lengthy inter-character dialogs.
Right. Got it.
There Will Be Role-Playing
I still encourage players to think about the personality aspects of their characters — 5e has rather clumsily loaded traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws into the character creation process, related to background. It’s a start, but I would hope players would come up with something a bit more organic, using those background-driven items as, well “inspiration.”
Role-playing is also important, in my games, when encountering people not in the party. The folk encountered, especially in town, are not pop-up clue dispensers. I can’t promise Shakespeare, but there will be character interactions, so I expect something more than “I walk up to the Bartender and roll on Deceive.”
All of which ties into the post topic: Inspiration [PHB 125]!
What is Inspiration?
Inspiration!
From a meta standpoint, Inspiration is an optional rule, based on whether the DM wants to use it. I’m not sure why they would not, but if your tables doesn’t use it … it’s worth asking why not.
Mechanically, here’s what the book say (emphasis mine):
Inspiration is a rule the game master can use to reward you for playing your character in a way that’s true to his or her personality traits, ideal, bond, and flaw.
By using inspiration, you can draw on your personality trait of compassion for the downtrodden to give you an edge in negotiating with the Beggar Prince. Or inspiration can let you call on your bond to the defense of your home village to push past the effect of a spell that has been laid on you.
Those examples given are a little misleading. You get Inspiration by (as a limited example) drawing on those personality traits in some fashion … and can then use Inspiration to do something better than usual. RP-wise, you can draw on that connection (“As I talk to the Beggar Prince, I remember that morning giving my last gold piece to that hungry child [for which I got Inspiration because it ties into my character origin], and I hold onto that insight as to what hunger really means as I negotiate for my friends’ release”), but it’s not completely necessary.
Gaining Inspiration
The 5e DMG (pg. 240) specifically suggests giving Inspiration for:
Roleplaying: A character does something notable and memorable that is consistent with their personality bonds, flaws, nature, etc.
Heroism: A character does something notably heroic — usually taking some sort of huge risk (with possible loss of life).
A Reward for Victory: Giving Inspiration when a character levels up is common at many tables. Other noteworthy goal achievements (slaying the BBEG, or even one of their powerful lieuts) can also qualify.
Genre Emulation: A character helps support the conventions and tropes of the genre — e.g., calling out that they are falling for a dame in a noirish setting because that’s what loner heroes do; leaning into the creepiness and fright of a horror -focused game.
That all seems pretty in line with my thoughts. The PHB similarly says:
Your GM can choose to give you inspiration for a variety of reasons. Typically, GMs award it when you play out your personality traits, give in to the drawbacks presented by a flaw or bond, and otherwise portray your character in a compelling way. Your GM will tell you how you can earn inspiration in the game.
As noted, good role-play will (or should — see below) almost always net Inspiration at my table. Sometimes it might not happen until after the session when I’m doing the game logs, but …
I also give Inspiration for particularly fun, imaginative, or memorable action by a character. If it’s the sort of thing you’d tell stories about afterwards in a tavern, or that might even be mentioned in the Saga of You that some bard will write someday — it’s worth Inspiration. If it’s something that made every player at the table cheer, laugh, or yelp with surprise (and will be told about at gaming tables to come) — it’s probably worth Inspiration as well.
Since the DM controls the reward of Inspiration, you can keep it from becoming too mechanical or from players “gaming” the system for it. Inspiration should feel like a real reward for doing something for doing something that makes the game more interesting, entertaining, or enjoyable for everyone at the table.
One last thing: the DMG also suggests the DM can dangle Inspiration out for someone when they are considering an action that might provide such a reward (e.g., playing Horatius at the bridge to let their friends escape). That makes it feel a bit too transactional and mechanical to me, the sort of thing that deflates the value of Inspiration.
Using Inspiration
If you have inspiration, you can expend it when you make an attack roll, saving throw, or ability check. Spending your inspiration gives you Advantage on that roll.
Basically, any time you roll a D20, you can burn your Inspiration to gain Advantage. It’s not always a game-changer, but it’s a nifty little boost.
Some tables include house rules letting you burn Inspiration to give someone else Advantage, or even to given an enemy Disadvantage. Thematically that’s a bit more dubious; it’s also potentially imbalancing.
Something tangential to the that, though, is this:
Additionally, if you have inspiration, you can reward another player for good roleplaying, clever thinking, or simply doing something exciting in the game. When another player character does something that really contributes to the story in a fun and interesting way, you can give up your inspiration to give that character inspiration.
Don’t let this erode down to players just giving their own Inspiration at the very last second to someone else who badly needs to make a roll. It should most likely happen out of combat, and the giver should provide some justification. (Note, though, that some tables effectively pool their Inspiration together; to me, that robs it of some of its color.)
Use It Or Lose It
Inspiration is a binary — you either have it or you don’t. You can’t earn multiple “points” of Inspiration.
That means that if you do something Inspiration-worthy, and you still have your previous Inspiration, you don’t get anything.
The biggest problem I see with players (myself included, when in that role) is holding onto their Inspiration “just in case.” Better to use it at the first point where it would be useful, and work at earning more. Fireball coming down your throat and you used DEX as your dump stat? Time to spend that Inspiration die to get Advantage on that DEX Save …
The DMG [p. 240] suggests each character should get around one Inspiration a session. That seems a bit high to me (and I’m not wild about an Inspiration quota), but if you have players that are doing solid RP and coming up with interesting ideas, it’s certainly not an impossible rate for them.
Some GMs put some bounds as to how long Inspiration can hang around out there — resetting it at the time of a Rest of some sort, for example. I understand that thematically, and it certainly encourages people to use their Inspiration while they have it, but I tend to be more lenient than that.
Helping the DM
There are a couple of other ways (at my table) that helping the DM can also generate Inspiration.
A player who makes substantive contributions to the game outside of it (keeping game logs, posting lots of funnies in the campaign forum, etc.) might sometimes get Inspiration for their character. I don’t do this every time because I don’t want it to be quite so quid pro quo, but occasional Inspiration is a nice tip-o-the-hat to a helpful player.
I know as a GM that I often have a dozen balls in the air, and keeping an eye out for someone making the game “more exciting, amusing, or memorable” sometimes fails because I’m too busy trying to decide what spell the evil wizard is about to cast.
Because of that, I encourage players to let me know if someone deserves Inspiration. I rarely say no (largely because I’m rarely asked for an unworthy cause).
Closing Thoughts
The DMG [p. 240] has further suggestions of when and why to award Inspiration, and some variants on the rule. It’s worth a read.
Inspiring!
I find that players often forget they have Inspiration available when playing in a VTT like Roll20. A simple way around that is to create or designate a token Status Marker for Inspiration. Alternately, I use the Dealer API/Script by Keith Curtis (see here and here) with some simple macros to put (or take) a shiny gold D20 on the player IDs on the Roll20 desktop, complete with an inspiring message. Fun, and very visible so that it doesn’t get forgotten!
How does this change in 5.5e?
Pretty fundamentally.
First off, it’s called HeroicInspiration now, probably to help distinguish from, say, Bardic Inspiration (a bardic class feature the lets the bard give another creature a D6 (rises with level) to use on any failed D20 Test in the next 24 hours).
Secondly, it’s no longer an Optional Rule, but baked into the system.
In addition to tweaking the name, the whole thing has evolved from top to bottom.
Using Heroic Inspiration
In the Vocabulary section of the 5.5e (2024) rules, it reads under “Heroic Inspiration“:
If you (a player character) have Heroic Inspiration, you can expend it to reroll any die immediately after rolling it, and you must use the new roll.
So two differences here:
It’s providing a die reroll, rather than Advantage. Effectively that’s the same, but process-wise it means considering using it only after a failure, rather than “I’ll use my Inspiration, oh, look, I succeeded on both rolls, so that was a waste.” It also helps it stand out against all the other mechanisms that award Advantage.
The reroll can be on any die roll, not just a D20 Test. Going up against that giant with your great axe and rolled a 1 on that D12 damage die? Now’s the time to try and improve on it! Leveling up and rolling your new Hit Die and score a 2 rather than a 10? Give it another go! Trying to heal your buddy and rolled something crappy in healing HP? Heroic Inspiration to the rescue! Your Wild Magic just did something disastrous? Let’s try our luck again! Death Saving Throw got a Nat 1? No problem!
If you gain Heroic Inspiration but already have it, it’s lost unless you give it to a player character who lacks it.
So you are still limited to a single “on/off” of having Heroic Inspiration, but if you get another one, you can (through some metaphysical concept) pass it on to another player. That seems a little odd (and like a homebrew rule that got formal approval in 5.5e), but there you go.
Getting Heroic Inspiration
But … how do you get Heroic Inspiration in 5.5e? Well, it’s still allowed / encouraged for the DM to award it for good role-playing, as in 5e [DMG 46]
You can also use Heroic Inspiration to reward roleplaying, immersion in the game, and heroism. Use it to incentivize the kind of behavior you want to see in your game, such as acting in character, taking risks, thinking strategically, cooperating well, or embracing the tropes of a particular genre.
The DMG commentary about it has gone from about a full page down to a short sidebar, but it still hits the fundamentals.
There’s also a PHB (p. 13) description:
Typically, DMs reward it when you do something particularly heroic, in character, or entertaining. It’s a reward for making the game more fun for everyone playing.
That last bit is important. It’s not just about the Player, or even the Player impressing the DM, but how the Player’s actions make the game better.
That said, the biggest change here is that Heroic Inspiration is produced through rule mechanics, too, e.g.,
If you are of the Human species — you get Heroic Inspiration after each Long Rest.
The Fighter (Champion) subclass 10th level feature “Heroic Warrior” gives you Heroic Inspiration at the start of any turn when you don’t have it (!).
The Musician (Origin Feat) lets you play a song after any Short or Long Rest and give Heroic Inspiration to some of your allies who hear you.
Spending a Short Rest in your Bastion will net you Heroic Inspiration.
Those are the mechanics I found; no doubt there are others or, at the very least, others will show up in future source books. Heroic Inspiration is now a more unique tool to tweak new classes, spells, and feats; it will be used. But will it be overused (or, frankly, is it overused now)?
On one hand, giving so many ways to get Heroic Inspiration kind of cheapens it? Charging the orcs to save the orphan you befriended? Epic! Took a nap in your Bastion? Literally ho-hum.
Oh the other hand, people will be more likely to use Heroic Inspiration if they know there are ways they will get it back. Which is no small thing.
I’ve found Insight rules terribly underutilized in the D&D games I’ve been in. Wisdom (Insight) [PHB 178] is essentially Perception for personalities.
Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone’s next move. Doing so involves gleaning clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms.
Examples of using Insight
Bob the Tailor is a town elder, who’s fluttering around trying to keep the party from the abandoned mine outside the town. It would be useful to know where his fear is oriented — toward the party, toward the town, toward a third party, or toward himself? Is he lying when he talks about the mysterious music people have heard in the area? If we we say we’re going to the mine anyway, does his fear spike — or is it anger? Is his smile when he sees the constable walking this way the confidence of seeing an approaching ally, or a deceptive cover for terror at being discovered?
Insight can help with all that.
In other cases, you might use Insight to figure out if the guy you’re gambling with is confident in his hand. How does he feel about that last card he drew? Is your date having a good time? Sure, she says she likes that roast beast you ordered for her … but how is she really feeling?
If someone’s trying to actively resist others using their Insight against them, they usually roll Charisma (Deception). (This is a case where one could easily use other base states for the Deception role, however — an academic using Intelligence (Deception) in hiding their bias in a paper, for example, or someone using Strength (Deception) to hide how incredibly freaking heavy that chest of gold they’re showing off with is.)
But rather than Active rolls, this is also a case where Passive skills come into play — the GM can consider passive Insight (or another’s passive Deception) to give give unsolicited clues about “He’s behaving a little twitchy,” or “He seems genuinely worried about you,” or even “You notice she seems attracted to the barkeep.”
Limitations of Insight
It does have limitations. It can indicate that someone is lying — but not necessarily what they are lying about, or why they are lying, or what the truth is. People lie, after all, for a lot of reasons. Insight might tell you that the city guard you’re talking with still seems highly suspicious of you after your story … but it won’t tell you if he’s going to let his friends know to keep an eye out on you, or that he’s going to try to ambush you later on.
In short, Insight gives you, well, insight into underlying feeling, reactions, etc., but not necessarily why they are reacting that way. Is the guard at the door speaking a bit flatly when he tells you about how great a guy the grand vizier is? Yeah, you can pick that up with Insight, but it’s going to be more difficult (i.e., take more time and questions and other actions) to tell if the change because of some sort of loyalty spell, or from fear that the vizier’s secret police are monitoring him, or even just boredom with people pumping him for information about the vizier.
Tells
Some DMs just provide the “tells” the player is seeing, and lets them draw conclusions. “The guy definitely has sweat beading on his forehead.” “Her eyes keep shifting around the room, never quite meeting yours.” “His voice is definitely rising in pitch and intensity.” “She’s tugging at her ear, the same way she was during that card game last night when she had a winning hand.” Things like that.
Of course, “things like that” are actually sort of Perception things — something that can just come out of the DM’s color text or description of the interaction. Insight seems to blend both Perception and Investigation (what is there, and what does it mean) for social interactions. If all the DM gave me was vague physical tics, I’d probably ask for more of what that means to me (and not trust that I the Player understand such things the same way as the DM or module writer).
The nature of Insight — picking up on tells, physical and verbal expressions, etc. — also requires up front you have a way of perceiving and interpreting such things. Dealing with the human barkeep at the tavern is one thing. Trying to read the body language of a gelatinous cube is another.
Even in less extreme situations, Insight might be hampered by unfamiliarity with the target’s customs and culture: shouting and waving around your spear might be an expression of hostility by this never-before-met humanoid, or it might be a ritualized greeting, or a mating display. Insight might still work, but less reliably.
Remote use of Insight
Finally, Insight can be used without the target standing in front of you — picking out a great gift for your girlfriend (or for the prince) based on what they’ve enjoyed in the past, or figuring out how likely the savage Orcish war leader you keep encountering is to attack the city or respond to various counters. I’d probably use a normal Difficulty DC as the opposition, and familiarity (or lack thereof) with the target would be a key in determining how difficult the estimate was.
Overusing Insight
Because it deals with interpersonal relationships, Insight can be easily abused or overused. Overuse of Insight is a bit like overuse of Perception (“I evaluate every person in the bar” is like “I search every room thoroughly”); it’s doable, but should carry some costs (time being a major one, but also something like the likelihood someone is going to catch you staring at them — or their love interest — and take offense).
Overuse also takes away a bit from Role Playing. The DM should be able to use passives to feed needed clues to the players about how people are behaving without their insisting on active Insight rolls, just as they feed visual prompts in the normal course of things rather than players requiring active Perception roles as they walk through town.
Who rolls Insight?
Note: Insight is one of those skills (like Perception, etc.) where sometimes it makes more sense for for the DM to roll it for a character, to determine if you can figure out something, can’t figure out something, or are deceived in your insight about something.
I would suggest as well that, like Perception,Insight can be abused by having everyone gang up about it. “Well, Sue, you can try using Insight to tell whether the merchant is ripping you off.” “Okay, I’ll try that.” “Me, too!” “Rolling Insight.” “Wait, let me do it, too!”
Aside from the fact that everyone rolling Insight means it’s likely someone is going to hit the DC, it’s also unrealistic. Insight depends on observation, focus, and over some period of time. While it’s often invoked mid-encounter (“Is the barkeep being truthful about when the wizard left?”), in most cases it should take some time — some questions, some comments, some jokes, some interpersonal communications to baseline the subject’s reaction. Having a party of 8 trying to do that to one target is unlikely (or suspicious). Aside from the person doing the actual talking, everyone else probably has something else to keep their attention (the guards, that guy in the corner, the gems in the idol, that meal last night, etc.).
Which is still more reason to let the DM do the rolling behind the screen. “Sue, you’re pretty sure he’s marking up the price outrageously, even though you don’t know him that well. Jeff, you think the merchant’s honest, but, to be fair, you were just talking with Mary about what supplies the group needs. Bob, you’ve been shopping for those potions you wanted, so I don’t think you’ve had a chance to figure out anything about how this guy ticks.” At the very least, the likely engagement of individual characters and the time they invest should go into the DC they have to beat with their Insight roll.
Are there changes in how Insight works in 5.5e (2024), rather than 5e?
Actually, for all that 5.5e zeroes in on social interactions (asserting Influence as its own Action, for example), Insight gets very little love, only showing up in the PHB in the 5.5e Skills list, which says only:
Discern a person’s mood and intentions.
Okay, it also shows up in the Search [Action] Vocabulary, where it’s sub-task in such actions is “Thing to Detect: Creature’s state of mind.”
I don’t find any other reference to it in the PHB or in the DMG.
It’s strange to have less information than the previous edition. Weird.
If anyone finds something more, please let me know.
So something happened in the game the night before I wrote this up that, at the time, I kind of blew through, but I wanted to give it some thought. This is, of course, just the sort of thing I have sometimes taken justified criticism for overthinking. But it’s a situation we’ve run into more than once, and I’d like to have figure out a rubric for myself to adjudicate against.
And, as a caveat, it’s always worth noting up front that time and combat in D&D are abstractions designed to turn the chaos of real-life combat into something manageable. While a level of verisimilitude is the goal, manageability always trumps that. Just as D&D is not a physics simulator, it’s not a great combat simulator (falling somewhere between an FPS and Chess).
When the slow guy is supposed to lead off the attack
So, here was the sitch: as the party crept up two different sets of stairs to the upper floor where the local BBEG had their throne room, the plan was that Theren the Sorcerer was going to begin combat by lobbing his Vitriolic Sphere into the center of the bad guys.
How should the combat have been sequenced? Even handwaving aside the question of whether anyone knew that Theren was going first (there was probably an excess of allowable coordination between the two subgroups, since they were going up two different sets of stairs and not using any sort of communication magic) …
Did Theren’s action take place outside of the Initiative order? Did his executing the attack start the combat so that’s when everyone rolls Init?
(Short answer: no.)
Did Theren’s Init get changed to the top of the Initiative order? Since he’s the one initiating the combat?
(Short answer: still no.)
Did everyone with Init rolls before Theren sort of get skipped over? (That’s what I did, but it effectively means that those higher Init rolls become low Init rolls, which is “unfair”.)
(Short answer: it should have been “voluntary”)
Did everyone before Theren in the Initiative order (ally and enemy) actually get to go in some fashion before Theren did?
(Short answer: it should have been that way, yes.)
And did it matter if the bad guys were surprised or not?
(Short answer: Yes and No. But in this case they were not — the Baroness had perceived you coming up the stairs and called for you to come in and play.)
In short: Initiative is rolled when combat begins. You can not make an attack outside of Initiative.
So, no, Theren doesn’t get to bypass the Initiative roll, or have his Init moved to the top of the order, or whatever. (Some folk have house rules for this, but that creates its own problems.)
So let’s simplify the situation a bit and say that the top Initiative order, when rolled, was (leaving out other players and bad guy mooks):
20 – William
15 – BaronessBBEG (the enemy)
10 – Theren
The first question is: is there Surprise? This is determined before Initiative is rolled, technically, though I don’t think it makes a difference.
If you’re surprised, you can’t move or take an action on your first turn of the combat, and you can’t take a reaction until that turn ends. A member of a group can be surprised even if the other members aren’t.
So if Baroness BBEG were surprised by this attack out of nowhere in her throne room (ignoring the previous sounds of the battles below), it counters her Initiative to a large degree. The beginning of the combat can be handled this way:
William says he is choosing to Ready an attack if anyone runs up to the top of the stairwell before his next turn. He’s doing this to let Theren get that shot off as agreed, rather than running into the middle of the room and spoil the AoE plans. It’s essentially giving up his turn, but there you go.
Baroness BBEG is Surprised — she’ll effectively see Theren coming, but will be unable to act on her turn. After her turn occurs, she would be able to take a Reaction (if she had Counterspell, she could then use it against Theren’s impending attack), and she will be able to act normally at the beginning of her next turn.
Theren pops up and acid bombs everyone’s ass.
So Surprise mechanics make things simple(r), because they provide for higher-Init enemies to be locked in place (but ready to go next time).
But in the case of the game that triggered this discussion, there was no Surprise (the party simply wasn’t stealthy climbing those stairs). Which means that there is a disconnect between Intent (lob an Vitriolic Sphere before they can act) and Execution (oh, they acted before I could lob my Vitriolic Sphere, because they had better rolls on Initiative). Or, as one site I saw put it:
“If your player wants to stab the bandit in the face before he has time to act, that’s what a high Initiative roll is for, not a Surprise round.”
Without Surprise, it’s Theren starting to move for his guns first, but the other folk outdrawing him.
“But Dave,” you may say, “she couldn’t see Theren before he came up the stairs.” That’s true, but because she isn’t Surprised (i.e., she was aware of a threat, and so ready to act/react), she still is able to act first as she chooses, because her Initiative is higher.
This gets into the whole idea that 6-second Rounds are themselves an abstraction — if there are six people in the room it’s not that Person 1 literally goes in the first second, Person 2 in the second second, etc. It means that within that six second timeframe, Person 1 acts before Person 2, who acts before Person 3, etc. That doesn’t completely match reality, because not everyone is declaring their actions before they happen as in some games (so that higher Initiative folk know what is coming), but it is essentially how 5e abstracts “People running around and into each other with intent to do mayhem.”
So here’s what should happen (should have happened in this simplification of last night):
William does whatever he’s doing — Dodging, Readying an action, casting Spike Growth in the middle of the room to make sure that nobody runs away before Theren can act, whatever. He’s choosing to back Theren’s play, but still moves faster/before Theren does, because he has higher Initiative.
Baroness BBEG “Readies an action.” Because I’m the GM, you don’t get to know what it is (“Chuck my magic spear at the first person atop the stairs over there”). Neener-neener. But she declares this (whispering in the GM’s head) before Theren because she isn’t Surprised and has higher Initiative.
Theren reaches the top of the stairs and turns to cast his spell …
… and Baroness BBEG executes her Readied action (throwing her spear at the first person atop the stairs, Theren, which hits) …
… and, if still alive, Theren throws his Vitriolic Sphere.
(Note: one of the players reminded me afterwards that Theren was Invisible. This gets into Perception checks, Active vs Passive, etc., to deal with his footsteps and verbal components, etc. In which case she might have been Surprised or she might have been aware something screwing was going on and still chucked her spear with Disadvantage against an Invisible foe before Theren could cast his spell (which would then drop his Invis).
Note that Theren could have said, “Well, heck, they aren’t Surprised so someone might plan to attack me” and change his plans from what had been intended. Or maybe, despite his intent and the team’s plans, William might have taken their Action to attack or distract the Baroness, which might have led to another change of plans by Theren. While Initiative lets people act first, the structure of the game from that point means that people are aware of the actions taken previously by people with better Init, allowing them to revise their plans accordingly.
(In the Action Economy, there’s a significant advantage in going first … but after that, Initiative is like Time: just a way to keep everything from happening at once.)
The bottom line is
You can’t easily plan your way into something that is the equivalent of Surprise (“I go before anyone else does”) if there is no Surprise present and you roll a low Initiative. That’s what Initiative is kind of for — if you roll poorly, you go later in the round.
If the other players who would have gone first want to effectively skip/delay their turn (do a Dodge or a Ready or maybe even a Help), that’s their prerogative for the tactical situation.
The enemy is under no such obligation, and if any of them have higher Init than the “this is how I am starting this combat” attacker, they get to do their thing first (which may be standing there in Surprise, or may be shooting you under the table).
Even if Greedo intended to fire first.
Here are some articles that touch on this — which, given the volume, shows this is something a lot of GMs fret about, though most of the scenarios here involve Surprise, which, as noted, simplifies the question a lot.
So there’s one more area where this kind of thing has come frequently into play, the “We arrange ourselves at the door and charge in” scenario, when the Doughty Fighters at front roll crap Init (because they used DEX as a dump stat) and everyone queued up behind them rolls better Init than them and basically have to:
Move through the Doughty Fighters (as Difficult Terrain, and potentially exposing themselves to attack, which is kind of why you wanted the Doughty Fighters to run in first).
Ready an Action to move in when the Doughty Fighters have and the space is clear (but not then being able to attack or anything, because Ready only lets you take a single Action or a Move).
Fire ranged attacks past the Doughty Fighters (if the angle through the door cooperates).
Waste their turn.
The bottom line there is: yup, those are kind of your choices when everyone in front of you is slower. Hopefully the bad guys inside the room are Surprised!
So what’s different in 5.5e?
The new 5.5e (2024) rules are fundamentally the same, but with a few differences that can affect the above conversation.
First, Surprise is handled differently. Rather than the sort of complex (and deadly) “Everyone rolls Initiative, but Surprised folk don’t get any sort of actions until their first turn, and then they only get Reaction(s) until their second turn,” instead, it’s “Everyone rolls Initiative, but Surprised folk do so at Disadvantage.”
Much simpler, and it still means Surprised folk may get badly hurt unless they have a very high Init modifier or roll really well. Especially if the folk on the Surprising side have managed their Stealth, successfully Hidden, and therefore get Advantage on their Init rolls.
5.5e also addresses the question discussed above: “How do we let the guy who’s going to initiative combat actually do so?” While still insisting on keeping everything inside the Initiative framework for combat, the new PHB and Basic Rules favor the combat initiator by allowing the DM to give them Advantage on their Initiative roll. The problem can still happen, especially if the party wants to give the first shot to someone who used DEX as a dump stat, but it doesn’t hurt.
Second, squares containing Allies/Friendlies on a grid map are no longer considered Difficult Terrain. That makes clearing the corridor into the room a lot easier, even if folk are not lined up by Initiative (which, technically, they can’t be anyway).
Well, first, begone “One D&D”! Welcome “D&D 2024”! The concept is, I think, kind of the same, but now they are adding a year on there so that it will sound out of date at some point.
The new core books will be … a thousand pages long? Crikey.
The reason for that length? All the old stuff (“D&D 2014”) will still be in there, alongside the new stuff (“D&D 2024”). You don’t have to choose! You can mix and match and blend and use it all, because it will all be backwards compatible, in all directions! Fun for all, especially the GM (who has to keep all these things in mind) and various software systems that have to keep track of double the rules and selected options.
Also, free puppies in every box!
WotC is trying to have it both ways: a new system to be excited about (and to buy books for), but not obsoleting the old stuff (though you’ll really want the new stuff because some players will want the new stuff). So all that money you invested in D&D 2014 stuff is still a good investment, except that you’ll want to buy the 1000-page core books for the new version because that’s what all the cool kids will be doing.
I’m fine with their sticking with the basic 5e mechanics, which are sound. But the forward-backward compatibility stuff is dodgy. I still would rather they just call it 6e or 5.5e and be honest about it.
You can lend your aid to another creature in the completion of a task. When you take the Help action, the creature you aid gains Advantage on the next ability check it makes to perform the task you are helping with, provided that it makes the check before the start of your next turn.
Sometimes two or more characters team up to attempt a task. The character who’s leading the effort–or the one with the highest ability modifier–can make an ability check with advantage, reflecting the help provided by the other characters. In combat, this requires the Help action.
A character can only provide help if the task is one that he or she could attempt alone. For example, trying to open a lock requires proficiency with thieves’ tools, so a character who lacks that proficiency can’t help another character in that task.
Moreover, a character can help only when two or more individuals working together would actually be productive. Some tasks, such as threading a needle, are no easier with help.
So it’s not enough to Help by holding the thief’s tool kit while they are picking the lock, or shouting encouragement to the guy trying to climb a cliff wall. You have to be able to do the thing you are assisting, and describe how you are helping.
What is the difference between Help and Working Together? The former is an action type during combat. As GM, I might be a little lenient on combat-setting “how are you helping?” actions, e.g., “I stand there, looking menacing at the attacking goblins, while screening the Rogue from view as she tries to pick the lock so we can get out of here” (you’re not directly assisting with the lockpicking, but you are sacrificing your action to let the Rogue focus on their without worrying about being stabbed = Advantage!).
Helping with Combat Rolls
More frequently, Help is applied directly to combat situations.
Alternatively, you can aid a friendly creature in attacking a creature within 5 feet of you. You feint, distract the target, or in some other way team up to make your ally’s Attack more effective. If your ally attacks the target before your next turn, the first attack roll is made with Advantage.
This might be a way, for example …
If you know the opponent has resistance or immunity to your flaming sword, maybe you can be more effective Helping the other fighter who uses a cold-based weapon.
If you know the opponent will be hit harder and more effectively by an ally (because of the nature of their weapon, or just because they have a huge damage bonus on strength), you might consider whether its worth effectively giving up your attack(s) for them to get an attack at Advantage.
If your Rogue wants to get Advantage for their Sneak Attack. Your standing within 5 feet of the target automatically allows the Rogue to Sneak Attack for extra damage; giving them Advantage on the roll through Help is icing on the cake. (See also below, “A Moving Distraction.”)
Note that this not a matter of Reach, but a 5 foot limit. So if someone with a Glaive (a Reach weapon that can attack at 10 feet) wants to provide Help, they need to step in to 5 feet from the opponent.
Also note that Help is just for the first attack (To Hit) roll. That makes it somewhat more useful at lower levels, when you are only sacrificing one attack to make that happen, and the bonus is going to the only attack the attacker has to use.
Help is also usable to assist with spell attacks, granting Advantage on any sort of spell attack roll against that target. Again, the Helper needs to call whom they are helping.
Finally, Help is an action frequently assigned to familiars and animal companions and the like — these often cannot attack, but can be commanded (or urged) to “Help the Fighter!” (“Bark bark!”)
As a GM, I like to encourage players to give me some idea of what they are doing to “help” in this way. “I wave my hands and attract the orc’s attention.” “I feint toward her to grab her attention.” “I shout, ‘Ashtuk, is that you?'” No mechanical effect is applied except the Advantage it provides, but it’s nice color regardless.
Am I Helping a specific attacker?
Yes. Probably. “I am going to Help the Rogue with their attack on the goblin I’m next to,” Not “I’m going to help someone on our side attack the goblin, whoever gets in their blow first.” That seems to be the standard read. In which case, if the Paladin goes after the goblin first, they do not get the Advantage bonus. And if the Rogue decides on a different target, the Help has been wasted.
This has been a matter of dispute, though, even among the game designers, with Jeremy Crawford asserting that you don’t have to identify a specific ally to Help, and Mike Mearls suggesting you do. I read the language (above) as being about “a friendly creature” and “an ally,” which I interpret as being “in particular”; I could see, though, interpreting it “in general.” … so ask your DM!
If you use the Help action to distract a foe, do you have to stay within 5 feet of it for the action to work?
No, you can take the action and then move away. The action itself is what grants advantage to your ally, not your staying next to the foe.
How does that work? Because each round is 6 seconds long, and a lot happens in that 6 seconds. You don’t need to keep standing next to someone to have effectively distracted or feinted toward them within that six seconds.
True, you’ll still an Opportunity Attack unless you can get a Disengage in there some way, like through a Rogue’s Cunning Action. But this can be a handy tactic for Helpers like a familiar owl using its Flyby ability.
(Note that Sneak Attack makes it very clear that the 5-foot proximity alternative to getting Advantage, to allow a Sneak Attack, needs to be measured at the time the Rogue is attacking. So you can’t just run by a target and have them suited for a Sneak Attack on the Rogue’s later turn … but you can run by, doing as Help as you pass, and the Rogue will then have Advantage and therefore be able to Sneak Attack the target even if nobody is standing next to them.)
So is this different in 5.5e?
Why, yes, yes it is.
The basics are much the same in 5.5e (2024) as in 5e. Info on the Help action can be found under Actions in the PHB and Basic Rules “Playing the Game.” The Summary for Help is short, sweet, and to the point:
Help another creature’s ability check or attack roll, or administer first aid.
In more detail, in the Vocabulary “Help [Action]” item talks about these.
Helping on a task
Assist an Ability Check. Choose one of your skill or tool proficiencies and one ally who is near enough for you to assist verbally or physically when they make an ability check. That ally has Advantage on the next ability check they make with the chosen skill or tool. This benefit expires if the ally doesn’t use it before the start of your next turn. The DM has final say on whether your assistance is possible.
The main difference here from 5e is being more precise about when you are qualified to Help someone — the answer being, if you have Proficiency with the skill or tool they are using (rolling on).
Again, you don’t have to be standing next to them: you can yell advice to someone using Athletics to climb that rock wall (“Don’t grab that brown rock — go for the black one next to it!”) as well as help your Rogue pick a lock … if you have Proficiency in doing the activity yourself.
Helping in Combat
Assist an Attack Roll. You momentarily distract an enemy within 5 feet of you, giving Advantage to the next attack roll by one of your allies against that enemy. This benefit expires at the start of your next turn.
The notes written about 5e above still pertain except that you are clearly not helping a specific ally with the attack, but any “one of your allies” (the next one who attacks that target).
That might in turn argue that if you are playing in 5e (2014) still, this new, clearer read should be treated as a clarification of, not a change to, the 5e ambiguity about this. Ask your DM.
Anything else?
It’s not mentioned in the Vocabulary, but the Summary mentions “administer first aid”. This actually refers to Stabilizing a Character, which reads:
You can take the Help action to try to stabilize a creature with 0 Hit Points, which requires a successful DC 10 Wisdom (Medicine) check.
Stabilizing is the lowest level of medical care, basically stopping the still-unconscious person to stop bleeding out. Using a medical kit or or administering first aid (which will bring someone back to consciousness) takes more time.
There’s additional (or parallel) information in the Group Checks article.
Questions about this pop up sooner or later in every campaign, as it’s an area that 5e either does fine or poorly, depending on which online forum you go to or specific question you examine.
So what happens when instead of bashing each other with hunks of steel or eldritch energies, you get up-close and personal
You can attack to Grapple
This is discussed on PHB 195. Essentially you use one of your Attacks to make a skill contest:
Attacker: roll Strength (Athletics)
Defender: roll Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics)
In other words, Grapplers need to be a lot better at that skill, or be pretty darned strong.
If you win, the target is Grappled (technically, has the Grappled condition, PHB 290).
Which, honestly, doesn’t do much. It basically reduces Speed to 0, even if the target has other features that increase its speed beyond base.
But a grappled target can still punch grappler, stab them, etc. They are more restrained by being within 5′ of their grappler (which gives them Disadvantage on spell attacks or ranged attacks), but melee attacks are just fine.
Grappling does keep the grappled target from running away until help arrives or until the target breaks the Grapple. They can try that by taking their Action to roll Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) vs the grappler’s Strength (Athletics) again.
The grappler can also slowly (half speed) drag a grappled target with them — or continue attacking them at close range (with no particular advantage, and with the same disadvantages).
Note:
When you have Grappled someone, you are not yourself considered Grappled.
When you have Grappled someone, you are using up one hand (the other hand is considered free for attacks, etc.)
Aside from breaking free of the Grapple through a contest, it can also be broken by:
The grappler being Incapacitated.
An effect knocking the grappled target out of the reach of the grappler or the Grappling effect, e.g., being knocked away by a Thunderwave.
Note there is a Grappler feat you can take. This gives you Advantage on attack rolls against someone you are grappling, and the opportunity to pin (restrain) someone (through another grapple check).
Grappling is part of the Unarmed Strike category, but instead of doing damage on a hit, and rather than an Athletics/Acrobatics contest (5.5e hates contests), the target has to make a Strength or Dexterity save vs a DC of (8 + attacker’s STR mod + attacker’s Proficiency Bonus). It’s simpler dice rolling, though the attacker will need to provide some numbers to make it work.
Once grappled, a player can keep the grapple, attack the target (with a hand not in use), move the target, or release.
The target can escape by using their action for a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check vs. that same DC.
Grappled creatures have Disadvantage to attack rolls against anyone other than their grappler.
If you move someone you have grappled, instead of halving your speed, each foot costs an extra foot of speed — similar to difficult terrain, which means it stacks with it. (This doesn’t apply when the Grappler is two sizes or more larger than the Grappled.)
Once Grappled, someone can use a Utilize and a pair of manacles to bind a Small/Medium Grappled (or Incapacitated, or Restrained) creature on a Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check against DC 13.
The Grappler feat is also rewritten. Once per turn if you hit with an Unarmed Strike, you can both do damage and try to Grapple them. You have Advantage to attack creatures you have grappled, and you can move them around at normal speed (if your size or smaller). (It also gives you +1 ASI for Strength or Dexterity.)
What if more than one person at a time is Grappling you?
While executing a Grapple takes one Attack (of however many you have within your Attack action), escaping a Grapple takes an entire Action. If more than one person has you Grappled, you can only escape one Grapple per turn … which means tag-teaming Grapplers can seriously cause you a problem.
Monster and Spell Grapples and Restraints
This is where things get a little tricky. Or more straightforward. You decide. The Grappled and Restrained conditions are quite separate, but come up a lot in spell and monster attacks: e.g., a Giant Octopus you Grappled with its tentacles; a Web spell causes the Restrained condition (PHB 292).
Just like with a Grapple, a Restrained creature’s speed becomes 0, and it can’t use any bonus to its speed.
Attack rolls against the Restrained target have Advantage, and the their attack rolls have Disadvantage.
The Restrained target also has Disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws.
(Note that the Grappler feat lets the grappler get Advantage on the Grappled target — but, more interestingly, it lets a grappler roll a second Grapple attack, which, if it succeeds, means both the grappler and the grappled target are both Restrained. Which actually seems kinda sucky.)
So, Dave, how do I do something useful with this?
Grappling by itself is kind of limited in what it can do. But with a little work, it can make an effective attack. So how do you grab an opponent and actually subdue him.
The vast consensus I’ve read on this is Grapple them (so they can’t get away) and then do a Shove attack (PHB 195, same Ability checks as the Grapple) to knock them Prone …
… at which point they get the Prone condition’s effects (PHB 292), and as Prone:
they can only crawl (but not if they’re Grappled and at speed 0!)
or they can get up (but not if they’re Grappled and at speed 0!)
they are at a Disadvantage to attack (Prone!)
attacks on them have Advantage (Prone!)
… and they probably have to use their whole Action to try to desperately break the Grapple.
Are you, the attacker, also Prone at that point? A good question. Consensus seems to be “No, but describe what you are doing to your DM.” I’d think of it as the arm twist behind the guy on the ground; you’re enough on your feet that you are not considered Prone, and can defend attacks normally (albeit with one hand), etc.
Given that, as long as you maintain this, you can continue attacking the Grappled+Prone guy and other folk can attack them, too, with Advantage, and that should distract them from attacking you back (as they desperately try to break the Grapple).
Consensus is that Grappling is much better (when by the players) in 5.5e (2024) than 5e. Monks, especially, are seen as natural beneficiaries of this.
Sooner or later, a question of falling comes up. Maybe it’s a pit trap, or a shove off a bridge, or an unsuccessful jump, or an expired flying spell, or …
It’s (always) a good time to remember that the goal of 5e is not to recreate actual physics, but to provide easy, quick, workable verisimilitude, generally favoring the players. The falling rules are a good example of this.
Fun Fact: Alan Rickman was dropped before he was expecting it, leading to some great facial expressions as he fell.
Of course, that raises other questions, many of which are answered in optional DMG/XGE/TCE rules.
You will “instantly” fall up to 500 feet in the turn you begin falling. You then fall an additional 500 feet at the end of each succeeding turn.
This mean no intervention by self or others during that first 500 feet if you don’t have a Reaction ability (such as Featherfall).
But after that everyone, including yourself, may be able to do something.
Note that though you fall 500 feet, you reach terminal velocity (so to speak) after only 200, given a max damage of 20d6.
From a physics perspective, in five seconds you will fall 180m, or 590 feet, so this is actually pretty realistic, at least that first turn.
Flying creatures that need to actively move to fly will fall if they are (a) knocked prone, (b) have speed reduced to 0, or (c) lose the ability to move. If the creature is noted as being able to hover, or is being held aloft by some spell effect, this doesn’t apply.
(In 5.5e, this is framed, “While flying, you fall if you have the Incapacitated or Prone condition or your Fly Speed is reduced to 0. You can stay aloft in those circumstances if you can hover.”)
The first round they will fall 500 feet minus their current flying speed.
In the case of the “prone” condition, they can on their next turn (if the ground doesn’t intervene) “get up” (using half their movement) to recover.
If you fall into water, make a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check; if you succeed, damage is reduced by half, per TCE. (Ditto for 5.5e.)
If you fall onto another creature, per TCE, the target must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity save to avoid being impacted by the falling creature:
Any damage resulting from the fall is divided evenly.
The impacted creature is knocked Prone, unless it is 2+ sizes larger than the falling creature.
I’d rule that intentionally falling onto another creature probably takes an Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (perhaps against their AC?).
This is different from creatures that attack by dropping onto their targets or leaping onto them from above. They will often have specific rules about damage they might take when doing so (e.g., the Piercer).
The Featherfall spell is cheap and easy and is cast as a Reaction, reducing falling speed to 60 feet/round, and landing you gently on your feet. It can affect up to 5 targets within 60 feet, including yourself, and lasts for a minute. (Pretty much ditto in 5.5e.)
The Monk ability Slow Fall feature is possibly a bit misnamed, but essentially you can use it as a Reaction to reduce falling damage by an amount of Monk Level x 5 hp. (Pretty much ditto in 5.5e.)
Earlier editions required something to slow you down (grabbing the wall, tree branches, etc.), but 5e does not; think of it as a three-point “hero landing.”
The Enhance Ability spell lets you pick “Cat’s Grace” as its DEX version. Among other things, it means the recipient “doesn’t take damage from Falling 20 feet or less if it isn’t Incapacitated.” (The 5.5e version of this does not include this ability.)
Using a Fly spell (etc.) will help, but only if it’s a fall of over 500 feet, otherwise you won’t have a chance to cast it before hitting the ground (unless you can cast it as a Reaction). (The 5.5e version does the same.)
There are a variety of abilities that let you reduce damage to yourself or others that seem to apply here, e.g., Spirit Shield, Bastion of Law, Guardian Coil, Song of Defense.
Anything that gives you resistance/immunity to bludgeoningdamage will likely help here, depending on how it operates.
Note that someone else using a Slowspell won’t help, as the falling creature‘s speed isn’t a factor in the damage or distance. (It doesn’t completely make sense, but them’s the rules).
Note that Athletics/Acrobatics do not, by RAW, do anything around reducing falling damage, though they have in previous editions. That’s all physics, baby. (Ditto in 5.5e.)
I would, though, support a house rule that a successful Dexterity (Acrobatics) roll vs. a DC equal to the damage you took might keep you from going Prone (sticking the landing!).
Part of an ongoing series of 5e (2014) Rules notes. See the end of the post for notes on 5.5e (2024) rules.
From PHB 241.
So how about in 5.5e?
