Episode 2

In this episode of Dungeons and Dark Roasts, the hosts discuss splash damage and area of effect spells in Dungeons & Dragons. They share their experiences with party members accidentally hurting each other and the importance of communication and strategy. They also talk about their favorite AoE spells and the consequences of using them incorrectly. One of the hosts shares a story about an incident where a party member nearly killed another player's character with an ice knife spell. Overall, they emphasize the importance of reading and understanding spells and working together as a team. Welcome to episode 2 of Dungeons and Dark Roasts. Stick around while we talk about splash damage and spice roasts. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at dungeons.n.darkroast and our Facebook page for all of our updates, recipes, and we're even going to be taking pre-orders for merch soon. All of our updates will be ready for you on social media. Hello, welcome to Dungeons and Dark Roasts. I'm Axis. And I'm Alex. We're two dungeon masters for D&D 5e, here to talk about the chaos of our adventures and the coffee that gets us through it. So this week, Axis, we are talking about splash damage, or in the D&D community, more widely known as AoE, or area of effect spells. Yep, the bane of everybody and their dog. Well, yes and no. I think area of effect spells, or AoE spells, are spectacular, especially as a ranger myself. However, if you are not cognizant of your party members or you choose to not like your party members, it definitely can be the bane of their existence. You know, it's funny that you bring that up. I don't actually have a problem with my party members trying to assassinate each other mid-combat. It adds a certain element of sociopath behavior into the situation. It definitely can. I don't know. I think that if you're not careful as a DM, which I think any good DM is careful with their party, and they address people as human beings outside of the table and party members in the table, and you have your over-the-table talk and things like that, it can be managed. It's where you have those instances where you're in the basement of the death house, like I had one of my parties, and they were in one long hallway, and my warlock was at the very front trying to get through a door, and the cleric at- no, I'm sorry, it wasn't the cleric. It was the paladin. The paladin at the back of the party decided he wanted to try and throw his spear past three party members to hit the door. Why he was hitting the door, I don't know, because they hadn't even opened it yet. Everyone at the table warned him against this. He did not listen to his party, and he speared the warlock in the back of the head and nearly killed the character. I nerfed the kill as the DM because that was not something I was going to allow in my first two sessions. Yeah, that's crazy. My warlock was a very seasoned player to me, and this particular paladin was a new player to my table, and actually ended up being the reason why I interview my players when they are at in-person games now. Because this turned into an incident where, and I'm sure it's something we will talk about more in a different episode, I actually had to kick the player. And, but it was an incident where the D&D table blended and there was no over the table, no table. Everyone just got very, very heated because of this inability to work together and see the potential danger to one's own characters. This particular thing was not an AoE spell, but it is definitely a situation where the party members weren't strategizing and working together. And that's where it's really important that AoE spells are used appropriately. Yeah, I think one of the important things of AoE in a party is you have to be cognizant of your party members, but there are also some DMs who don't actually do spear damage as a risk to party members. I know that some do. Usually whenever I'm playing with new characters, I don't generally do it right off the bat, mostly because people don't generally pick up spears. But, you know, you bring up a good point and maybe I should start reassessing my leadership strategy because that could go sideways really, really fast. It can. And I think it's why session zeros are so very important. I think for tables that are established, bringing in new players, it's important to have potential player interviews. I know that's probably not a popular opinion, but not everybody meshes. And so, yeah, it's definitely a strategy that I choose to use. So AoE, what is your favorite AoE spell? Because I have mine, but what is yours? Personally, love the Shatter spell. But I think in terms of favorite, I think my favorite AoE has to be Ice Knife. And it's not even a spell that I use very often. The reason it is my favorite is because a good friend of ours who has been gaming with our table since last year, Rulark, decided to take out half of his party with a mis... No, actually, it wasn't mis-aimed. He aimed it perfectly. He aimed it perfectly. It landed exactly where it was, where he wanted it to go, and it functioned the exact way he thought it did. He just didn't read his spell. Exactly. PSA here, kids. Read your spells. Read your spells, kids. I say it all the time. I say it to my players. I say it to my literal kids. Read your spells, kids. And we're referencing, if you guys haven't heard episode one, we are referencing the Dragons of Stormwreck Isle and the Myconid Cave. And that was what episode one was about. And in this cave, our party had already gone to the back of the cave and they were in with all of the... Was it missed access? Or was it... You know, it's described as fumes. Oh, okay. So, it's described as fumes. And they had entered the room and they had already dealt with one of the problems of the room, which was a handful of fume drakes. But they were now fighting a handful of fire snakes, which are elemental creatures with a weakness to ice. And Rulark acted as any good wizard would. He got to safe range and unleashed his ice firepower. Unfortunately, ice knife deals AoE damage and took out our good friend Gru and another player. Yeah, because Rulark got to a safe distance, but he didn't warn anyone else. Oh yeah, you gotta watch Rulark with him. He strategizes. He is a great player. He is a great strategizer. He is a great D&D player. But he doesn't tell anybody anything. He will just run off. And if I see him cross the map, I'm just like, okay, well, he's up to something. So, somebody's either about to die or he's about to save everybody. Yeah, it's the bird brain. I'm going to tell you what that's about. He'll probably hear this. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, we got to introduce you to another of these characters, Hunobark. It's just chef's kiss. It is the best character I have seen anyone play of an owlin in a space setting. Oh my goodness. Oh, it's great. It's great. The ice knife went off, took down Gru, took down another player, and then he specifically said, oh wait, can I take that back? And because I know how ice knife works, I said, no, you cannot. And he instantly said, oh yeah, I forgot to finish reading the spell and I didn't read down and I saw that it deals splash damage. And his party members took the brunt of that. I was on the other side of the room, fortunately, because I probably would have hurt his character. But the other characters did take some damage. He was successful at getting rid of the fire snakes and we were able to get out and we ended up healing everyone. But I believe they spent a couple of turns down and did Gru? Gru is the one that ended up having to do death saving throws. Is that accurate? Gru came actually very close to death. To true death. Yeah, to true death. He had two failures and if he would have gotten one more failure, his character would have been dead dead. Oh, see, this is the beginning of his God Gru arc. Yeah. He was a martyr first. This was the triggering moment for him. He vowed to himself never to be downed by an ice knife again and he is now going in the opposite direction and becoming a god. Yes, and gathering small creatures and or fuzzy creatures to him in the midst of doing this. Yeah. Well, for my own particular favorites, and as I said, I play a ranger. Ginger in this campaign is a ranger and I have played a ranger since Pathfinder. It's one of my favorite races. I know that is, again, an unpopular opinion because people think that rangers are weak and they can't do anything and I just don't play her that way and she ends up getting nerfed a lot because she's a little OP, frankly. She is a dual wielding ranger. Oh, yeah. And this particular character, because she has a dragon companion as a ranger, doesn't have the normal spells I would have. Right. But I do love a good AoE control spell. Probably comes from my days on playing, you know, that open world strategy game that we all love and know. Oh, yeah. Let's not give them any more money than they already have. From all those years ago. But I played a ranger in that game, too, and I love a good AoE spell. And I love Entangle and Spike Growth. I love rooting effects. I love rooting effects. I do because not only, like, Entangle doesn't even deal damage. You're just restraining someone. And I have had situations in my own party where, again, we had a ranger in our party and we were in Barovia. I was the DM. And we had two party members in the actual game, not at the table, but in the game, that were fighting. And when I say fighting, I mean, spoiler alert here, there were Vestani. This is why they call me the dyslexic DM. When I read it wrong, it's canon. But it's the Vestani. And there was a camp and there were children. And one person just believed in the genocide of the Vestani. And the other person said, no, no, no, this is not how we're going to do this. These are children. We can't do this. And the ranger had to get between the two of them and used her Entangle spell to keep them apart from killing each other. And in real life, they got up from the table, they shook hands, they were good friends, and everything is fine. But in that game, I mean, people were sweating at the table. It was, you could hear a pin drop. It was very intense. And that moment from that ranger saved probably part of that game because we could have ended up with a dead character. Well, and yeah, that's the consequences. Sometimes using AoE in the improper context, sometimes you can cast a spell and end up killing one or more people. Sometimes the spell does so much damage, it's an instant death, which is a thing in D&D. And you can not only ruin the gameplay of another player, you can also severely cripple your entire party by not paying attention to not only AoE in general, but reading your spells, kids. And, you know, it can be a huge advantage if you are going in and you have someone that, you know, you need to restrain these guards and you need to do it quietly and you're on the outside of a building, you can use Entangle. You can quiet them with Entangle if your DM allows you to. You know, it's very movie-esque when you use Theater of the Mind and you talk about the vines going up around the person and, you know, wrap around their mouths and, you know, you could have your DM see if you can roll for that to see if they are quieted and restrained. And that can be a huge, huge asset to, you know, one of your little sneak attacks. Or you can use the other spell that I love so much, which is Spike Growth. And if you drop Spike Growth, you can do it in a couple of different ways. I've done it preemptively and put it between myself and a bad guy. You want to get to me? Cool, you're going to take damage on your way over to me and while you're standing there. Yeah, that's the one that acts like it's caltrops, right? Kind of. I always like to think of it like you're walking through rose bushes. Right, right, right. The briars and brambles. Yeah, the brambles. And it would be, that would be tough to do. Oh yeah, you're going to take some serious damage. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And it's a great deterrent. It can be a great way to actually have some diplomacy. You know, you put up some Spike Growth between you and this person that you need to have a conversation with and they're a little hot-headed, that's going to give them pause. You're going to say, no, I can, we can negotiate. We can talk this out if you don't really want to come all the way over here. If you have the gumption to come all the way over here and fight me, cool, you've given me enough time to get prepared. Yeah, well, and that also opens up entirely new strategies as well because if you are trying to negotiate with somebody and they do get past the Spike Growth, you know, you could preemptively cast Entangle and have it as a delayed reaction. Or you could have silenced the area without them seeing it, where if they do get across and then they want to call for their guards, they can't call for their guards because it's AoE stacked on top of AoE. Or like you were just telling me the other day about Darkness and how it impeded actually another spell. It did, actually. I was playing with a dungeon crawl. It's very combat heavy. There's not a whole lot of RP. But I wasn't thinking and I cast Darkness to split up a couple of bad guys because they would have had to run in two separate directions to get out of the Darkness. Well, I didn't realize it, but the player that immediately followed me had also prepared a spell known as Hypnotic Pattern. Unfortunately, Hypnotic Pattern is sight-based. Well, whenever you're in Darkness, you can't see anything. Even Darkvision doesn't work in Magical Darkness. So I actually didn't deal any damage to any of the players, but it did cripple their ability to be an effective player as well. Yeah, I can see that. I have seen Darkness used. I see Darkness used a lot by Warlocks. Yeah, I was playing a Warlock. Okay, see? There you go. There you go. And there is another AoE spell, and I can't remember the name of it right now, but it's kind of like basically the Arms of Cthulhu or something. I think, are you thinking of... It's the Hadar one. It's all of the tentacles coming up out of nowhere. It even pairs with Magical Darkness. Yeah, it pairs so well. Beautifully. And as long as you warn your party, you can pair two AoE spells, of course, unless they're both Concentration. Now, if you have two spellcasters that cast both these things together as a team, oh my goodness, yeah, things could just be done with. Oh yeah, that spell is known as the Arms of Hadar. Thank you. Yes, that is what I was thinking. Yeah, it just says, Tendrils, I read it as tentacles, of dark energy erupt from you and batter all creatures within 10 feet of you. So you're just getting slapped by tentacles, and because you're in Magical Darkness, you can't run away. Yeah, and you know, that's actually another one of those, because I've never read that spell. I've never played a Warlock, but that's a good one. If you don't read your spells, and you had dropped Magical Darkness, and now you're using this spell, you could be hitting your own party members if you don't remember how close they were or know where they're moving. Or in the case of Warlock, there's actually an ability to make it where you can actually see through the darkness, and you can cancel that out. But that's a more advanced tactic that we'll talk about another time. But yeah, I think it's very, very important, specifically with AoE spells, that if you're going to rely on AoE spells as part of your character, it's very, very important that you read them and think about how they can be added to by other players, or how they would limit other players as well. Right, and this is when, you know, when you're resting at the tavern, and you know you've got a party coming up, and obviously you can't do all this stuff necessarily on the fly. And that's why reading your spells is very important. But like, if you're at the tavern, and you're about to go on a mission with your party members, this is when you talk about it. This is when you guys talk about, do we want to use Spike Root? Do we want to use Entangle? Do we want to use Darkness? Do we want to use Thunderwave? You know, is everything near a cliff, and we can just push it all off the cliff with Thunderwave? You know, it works that way. Don't encourage people to do that. I put so much time into trying to assassinate my players for them to just come along, and throw everything off of a cliff, and completely dismantle my assassination attempt. Don't encourage them to do that. That's my big fear about this podcast, is we're just going to give all of my secrets away, and then I'm going to be ruined, because everybody will see everything coming. I think it'll be okay. You'll just get more creative. That's all that's going to happen. You're just going to have to homebrew everything, or do it on the fly, and you'll be fine. It's like me. I don't prepare for anything. I just do it all on the fly. That's partly because I can't read the book, because I'm dyslexic, but, you know, that's neither here nor there. You know, I actually do make a really good homebrew. It's been so long since I've done it, I'm a little out of practice, and it's starting to reflect in my experience with 5e, but that actually reminds me of the homebrew of the week. Yes, come join me for the homebrew of the week, which this week we are calling duck and cover. If you can, I suppose. If you can. If you see it coming. If you don't, then, you know, it might be a little spicy, and you just have to take it to the face. So this week, I would love for you to tell us, because this is really your creation. You know, I just got creative. I was looking at the title of the episode, Splash Damage and Spice Roast, and I went into my kitchen, and I was looking through, okay, what spices do I have? I could put garlic in it, I could put oregano in it, and then I started looking, and I was like, oh, I have clove, and I have ginger. So I dumped a couple of tablespoons of each into the unbrewed coffee, and then brewed it like that. And that is actually something I do often with cinnamon and nutmeg, and I've never had it with ginger or clove. And so I followed your lead, because we did, of course, talk about this while we were trying it. And I put a little ginger and a little clove into the coffee as I brewed it. It was delightful. And then I, of course, as I always do, I kicked it up a notch. Yeah. So I only put one sweetener in it, just like you did, but I added a full shot of horchata. Oh, that sounds good. It is so delightful. And so I brewed it black with clove and the ginger, one sweetener, then I put in a full shot. And for those of you who don't know what horchata is, it is a Latin-based rum cream liqueur with cinnamon and a little bit of vanilla, a hint of vanilla in it. And it is delightful on its own, but it was wonderful in this coffee. And it is so, it just is, obviously, it's hot coffee, but it makes you feel warm and comforted. It's like a hug in a mug. Oh, gross. I like it because it's kind of got that tranquilizing effect from the cloves. So everything in your mouth kind of goes numb a little bit, and you're like, okay, it's time for bed. No, it sounds like you used more than I did. Well, you know. But so I have the recipe for this that we will post with this episode for you all. And again, it is called the Duck and Cover. And so, of course, drink responsibly if you're choosing to put horchata, or I think even a spiced rum would be beautiful in this. Oh, yeah. Maybe even a whiskey. I'm not particularly a whiskey drinker. Yeah, I've got some peanut butter whiskey I put in it just to try it. It tasted pretty good, but I'm not sure if that was the whiskey or the peanut butter. So I'll have to try a couple different ways. I have never heard of a peanut butter whiskey. Oh, I've got to have you over, or I've got to bring some over to you. I have got a recipe that will knock your socks off, and maybe we can find some way to work it into the podcast. Otherwise, everybody will just miss out. No, we'll find something to do with it for sure. It's funny that you call it a duck and cover. I actually covered up an AOE spell just recently with a deception roll, and I was able to successfully blame another party member for casting a fireball that almost killed half the party, so. I mean, go big or go home, right? Right, right. I think we'll have to discuss that next week for our situational awareness episode and how using your abilities to their most effective can get you out of a lot of trouble. Thank you all so much for joining us again. This is our second episode, and we couldn't be more grateful for your attendance. If you would like to meet us, and hopefully we will be well into the podcast by then, we will be at the Dallas Fan Expo, June 7th through the 9th, and we would love for you all to come out and say hi. Thanks for listening, guys.