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

Chapters

0:00 Intro - Welcome to Greyhawk ’760:15 Why I Hate Blade Ward1:10 Blade Ward: 2014 vs. 20242:00 The Action Economy Problem2:30 Final Thoughts & Playtesting3:00 Outro - Like & Subscribe

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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.