A warrior fends of a magical attack.

I Hate Blade Ward – Greyhawk ’76 (Ep. 5)

Leave a Comment / D&D 2024, Greyhawk '76, Podcast / By / / D&D, D&D 2024, dungeons & dragons, Greyhawk

Ken rants about the new and improved Blade Ward cantrip. in Dungeons & Dragons 2024.

Chapters

0:00 Intro – Welcome to Greyhawk ’76
0:15 Why I Hate Blade Ward
1:10 Blade Ward: 2014 vs. 2024
2:00 The Action Economy Problem
2:30 Final Thoughts & Playtesting
3:00 Outro – Like & Subscribe

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Watch “I Hate Blade Ward – Greyhawk ’76 (Ep. 5)” on YouTube.

Show Notes

Welcome to Greyhawk ’76. I’m Ken Newquist and I hate blade ward.

  • Quick backstory: Had our first Greyhawk ’76 session, in which the adventurers got recruited to recover a lost Fairheights family treasure from an abandoned mine.
  • Our human battlemaster / wizard initiate LOVES blade ward.
    • And rightly so – it’s a cheap, spammable buff that builds on his already impressive AC.
  • What changed?
    • What it did:
      • Resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing attacks
      • Lasted until the end of the next turn
    • What it does now
      • Whenever a creature makes an attack roll against you before the spell ends, the attacker subtracts 1d4 from the attack roll.
      • Requires concentration
      • Lasts for 1 minute.
  • My concern:
    • Impacts the action economy.
      • We’ve added another die role for EVERY attack on this character. More dice being rolled means more time waiting for die rolls. And more math.
    • Increased cognitive load on the Dungeon Master
      • I’ve got a lot of things to remember. This is one more thing.
    • Combined with fighter’s 18 Armor Class (from Scale Mail), this increases the character’s tank-iness at low levels.
    • Seems over powered for a cantrip (no, I did not do the math)
  • Where we go from here?
    • Obviously I’m joking that I hate Blade Ward.
    • I have some concerns, but we can mitigate them by:
      • The player rolling the dice
      • The player keeping track of the spell
    • We already have similar book keeping for things like bless so it’s not THAT much more.
    • But it IS one more thing.

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