Guardian of Faith + Spirit Guardians

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

If you hadn't heard, Larian just revealed (via Twatter) the Guardian of Faith spell.

If you aren't familiar with it, it's a level 4 Conjuration spell that essentially creates a stationary melee turret that deals radiant damage (Dex save for 1/2). It deals a fixed 60 dmg (20/10 at a time) before disappearing, lasts for 8 hours ('all day' in BG3 terms) and can deal it's damage every turn. The RAW version states a hostile creature has to move within range (10 ft) to activate it, so presumably a creature sitting very still within it's range cannot get hit, but we'll see how Larian handles this.

Now for the juicy bits: it doesn't require concentration, so you can cast this as many times as you have 4th level spell slots (and a Sorcleric could create more 4th level slots), and you can combine it with other concentration based spells, such as Spirit Guardians and Bless.

A-Team incoming!

[Yojo0o]

You also get to do this sort of persistent effect stacking with Spiritual Weapon, if that gets added to the game. Which it really should.

[fairman2007]

Sounds like a great way to cover your retreat through a chokepoint. Or if enemies have a scripted patrol area, drop this in their way and let them walk right up to it.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by fairman2007:

Sounds like a great way to cover your retreat through a chokepoint. Or if enemies have a scripted patrol area, drop this in their way and let them walk right up to it.

It's interesting both because dumb AI can be abused, and also because sometimes you can just pick up your opponent and throw them at the Guardian!

[BigAlzBub]

Nope, this spell is bad...really, really, shockingly bad.
The choke point idea is nice if it weren't for the fact that the spell can at the absolute outside deal 79 damage and that requires the highly unlikely scenario of getting the damage total to 59 and then someone with at least 20 HP remaining failing their save for the full whack of damage.

Typically it is only good for between 3-6 hits before it expended, and you probably need to be playing with your food to get the most out of it. Maybe if you are doing some weird solo run it might have some versatility, but otherwise it is just one of the worst spells I have ever seen, ever.

[juicy j]

cleric spells are super cool

[dulany67]

In Solasta, spirit guardians is a much more useful spell.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by BigAlzBub:

Nope, this spell is bad...really, really, shockingly bad.
The choke point idea is nice if it weren't for the fact that the spell can at the absolute outside deal 79 damage and that requires the highly unlikely scenario of getting the damage total to 59 and then someone with at least 20 HP remaining failing their save for the full whack of damage.

Typically it is only good for between 3-6 hits before it expended, and you probably need to be playing with your food to get the most out of it. Maybe if you are doing some weird solo run it might have some versatility, but otherwise it is just one of the worst spells I have ever seen, ever.

It cannot deal 79 damage, or anything above 60, unless the target(s) are vulnerable to radiant damage. It always deals either 20 or 10 damage, which are both even multiples of 60. It's theoretical maximum would be 120 damage then, to vulnerable targets.

60 damage is the equivalent of about 11d10 damage on average. What else can deal 11d10 damage at 4th level? Moreover, it's guaranteed damage (even on a failed save it deals 10 damage) and it will always deal all of it's damage as long as there are targets to deal damage to (you don't lose damage if you miss a turn for some reason).

Additionally, because it doesn't use concentration, you can stack multiples of them, create a gauntlet with them for enemies to run through, stack them on top of bosses, or create chokepoints the enemy has to run through to reach you. It's only downside is it's melee range, but you can also throw or shove enemies into it, or use Thorn Whip or Thunderwave to force movement. And because it doesn't use concentration it can be stacked with other dsmage dealing spells like Spirit Guardians or defensive spells like Bless. It can never be broken itself, except by a Dispel Magic or Counterspell (or anti-magic).

The damage is automatic and can trigger every turn, not just once per round, so you can have multiple Clerics shoving, thtowing or Thorn Whipping enemies back and forth between Guardians every turn in addition to triggering them if any enemy tries to move on it's turn. The only way to avoid it would be to have an Evasion like ability that converts save for 1/2 to save for nothing and creatures with that aren't common. Plus even if creatures did have it, the Guardian's damage isn't wasted if it misses because the spell says it deals up to sixty damage, not that it has x attacks or attempts to do so. It has a 'battery' of 60 damage and it will continue to force saves until all 60 has been dealt.

It's duration on TT is 8 hours. In BG3, any spell with a duration of 1 hour or longer has been made into 'all day', i.e. until you Long Rest. This means you can use it to set up traps and ambushes, and lure creatures into it (draw aggro, retreat, etc.)

While you only get 1 level 4 spell slot by level 7, only 1 level later you have 2, so a team of 4 Clerics could be casting 4 of these (240 damage) by level 7 or 8 (480 damage) by level 8. It's radiant damage so it isn't resisted often, and it seems the undead and devils are a common threat in this game so we may even see some vulnerability.

It's only weakness being immobility, maybe Larian will allow us to cast it on Tenser's Floating Disc or some other moveable object?

[BigAlzBub]

What if a creature with 9 hit points blunders into it? Under one interpretation you could have it attempt the save, if it fails it discharges 20 damage, if it makes it, it only discharges 10, either way it dies...however if the spell works like this then it is EVEN worse than I thought it was.
Alternatively, if a creature with 9 hit points is struck, then the hit point counter goes to 9 and thus it could reach 59 hit points.

A fireball hitting two targets deals 60 points of damage (and usually you can usually hit 3+ targets with a fireball, more if you have a way to prevent friendly fire or don't care), now fire is a relatively commonly resisted damage type, but this is way better than 20 radiant over potentially 3 turns.

yes you could do some crazy crap with 4 clerics each unloading their entire selection of 4th level spells for a whole lot of damage, but if you are doing this, you are going to need to pick every single crumb of food to cope with the huge number of long rests you will be taking, and you better hope that the tadpole really is in near permanent stasis until the correct conditions are met.

[Aldain]

I mean, as impressive stacking such things theoretically is, there's probably better things you could be doing with your spell slots.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by BigAlzBub:

What if a creature with 9 hit points blunders into it? Under one interpretation you could have it attempt the save, if it fails it discharges 20 damage, if it makes it, it only discharges 10, either way it dies...however if the spell works like this then it is EVEN worse than I thought it was.
Alternatively, if a creature with 9 hit points is struck, then the hit point counter goes to 9 and thus it could reach 59 hit points.

A fireball hitting two targets deals 60 points of damage (and usually you can usually hit 3+ targets with a fireball, more if you have a way to prevent friendly fire or don't care), now fire is a relatively commonly resisted damage type, but this is way better than 20 radiant over potentially 3 turns.

yes you could do some crazy crap with 4 clerics each unloading their entire selection of 4th level spells for a whole lot of damage, but if you are doing this, you are going to need to pick every single crumb of food to cope with the huge number of long rests you will be taking, and you better hope that the tadpole really is in near permanent stasis until the correct conditions are met.

You don't understand how any of this works.

If the save is made no damage is dealt at all, the Guardian does not lose any of it's store of damage.

If damage is dealt, and the target has fewer hp than the amount of damage, that damage is simply lost to the aether, but is still consideted 'dealt' as creatures can be dealt more damage than they have health.

For illustrative purposes, if 3 creatures with 19 or less hp entered the range of the Guardian and failed it's saving throw, then each would be dealt 20 damage and the Guatdian would disappear. The interesting thing is that if they make their saving throws, yhen the Guardian only 'deals' 10 pts of damage and you only remove 10 from it's store. Which means as long as targets continue to trigger it, sooner or later it will eventually deal all it's damage (minus any overkill, which is lost).

A Large spectral guardian appears and hovers for the duration in an unoccupied space of your choice that you can see within range. The guardian occupies that space and is indistinct except for a gleaming sword and shield emblazoned with the symbol of your deity.

Any creature hostile to you that moves to a space within 10 feet of the guardian for the first time on a turn must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw. The creature takes 20 radiant damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. The guardian vanishes when it has dealt a total of 60 damage.

As you can see in the quote here, the Guardian disappears only after it has dealt 60 damage, and it always deals that damage in chunks of either 10 or 20, depending on the save, and overkill damage simply disapoears. 10 damage dealt to a creature with 9 hp left is still 10 damage dealt.

If the damage is affected by either resistance or vulnerability it does not affect how much damage the Guardian dealt as this is a multiplication that occurs after it has dealt damage. If it deals 20 damage to a radiant vulnerable creature, and that damage gets multiplied to 40, the Guardian has still 'dealt' only 20 damage.

I have no idea if it can crit or not, but I doubt it, and if it could crits would be treated the same. The reason I doubt it can crit is because there's no attack roll, but who knows?

[Hobocop]

I feel like Banishment or upcasting is generally a more useful application of a cleric's 4th level slots, as thematically cool as Guardian of Faith is. Removing threats entirely for a minute on a Charisma saving throw is very strong as it lets you divide and conquer and Charisma is an uncommon save.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Fireball does 6d6 - that's 21 average damage per target (save for 1/2. It would have to hit 3 targets, and all would have to fail their saves, to match the guaranteed damage output of the Guardian.

Fireball actually rolls for damage, and only gets one chance, but the Guardian will continue to deal damage until it has expended it's entire damage pool. If a creature makes it's save and only takes 10 damage, the Guardian will deal the rest of it's damage on subsequent turns.

The Guardian never wastes it's damage (except through overkill) because it will continue to fire until all 60 pts. have been used. While a Fireball can potentially deal more damage (the maximum is 36 per target), on average it isn'tn or just breaks even (average roll of 6d6 is 21, 21x3 targets = 63), and if any of the targets save or resist, the Fireball does not get extra opportunities to deal it's damage.

The Guardian is persistent. It will continue trying to deal it's damage turn after turn until it's FULL 60 damage has been dealt. A Fireball could whiff and only deal 6 damage to 3 targets (absolute worse case scenario) and that could even be halved to 3 per target.

The Guardian, even if it were hitting radiant resistant creatures that made their saves, would continue dealing damage until it had dealt 60, it would just do it much more slowly (dealing 10 at a time) - although this would effectively cut the damage in 1/2 to 30 (just as fire resistance would to a Fireball).

The advantages here are that it's guaranteed damage (Guardian doesn't disappear until it has dealt 60 damage) and radiant.

The disadvantages are thst it's immobile and melee range (which can be worked around).

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by Hobocop:

I feel like Banishment or upcasting is generally a more useful application of a cleric's 4th level slots, as thematically cool as Guardian of Faith is. Removing threats entirely for a minute on a Charisma saving throw is very strong as it lets you divide and conquer and Charisma is an uncommon save.

Two completely different arenas - control or damage.

Since Guardian isn't a concentration spell, you could cast Hold Person or whatever, then Guardian right next to that creature for guaranteed damage (although there's still the stipulation about it only being triggered by movement).

Anyway, my point is that control and damage are two completely different objectives, and Guardian of Faith is a damage spell. One that is equivalrnt to 11d10 on average.

[BigAlzBub]

Fireball does 8d6 damage not 6d6, which on average is 28.

The general consensus of opinion on D&D Beyond is that it is the damage dealt, not what was triggered that determines how long the Guardian lasts for, but obviously that is subject to interpretation by individual DMs (or in this case Larian). If you want control, go with a Glyph of warding, it is bigger, does way more damage, can be stacked infinitely, and if you choose Ice or Lightning you can do some real shenanigans in BG3.

[dolby]

it's not bad but it's not a fireball... or Glyph of warding - with a free droped water bottle...