However, there are some exceptions, which I will go into below. If the bandits simply attack the rest of the party, and the party (excluding the wizard, because they are casting blade ward) attack the bandits, then it becomes 3 attacks from the party’s actions against the 4 from the bandit’s actions.Īssuming that the party is not exceptionally more powerful or well-armed than the bandits, simple math dictates that the party will most likely lose this engagement.įrom this, it should be quite clear that using one’s action purely defensively is generally not the best course of action to take. Sure, the Wizard will take less damage if any of the bandits attack them, but they will still take half damage. However, if the Wizard, in this case, uses their action to cast blade ward, they are not actually spending their action doing anything that will help their party win this fight. Because there are even numbers, the action economy is said to be balanced. In a full round of combat, each creature gets a turn, consisting of movement, actions, bonus actions, and reactions. If we dive briefly into what is known as ‘ action economy,’ we can see why this is a bad idea.Īn average D&D party of four members (let’s take the classic combination of Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and Cleric) is going up against an equal number of enemies, such as bandits. His means that you cannot use your action to Dash, Disengage, cast a spell, make an attack, etc. The second limitation of the spell is that it requires a full action to cast. Other sources of non-weapon physical damage are far rarer and generally come from environmental effects such as falling boulders or from spells, like catapult. Spellcasters wanting to protect against this should instead take the feather fall spell, which ignores all falling damage.Īs an amusing aside, if you have about 80 hit points or more, you have a decent chance of surviving a fall from any height (even from orbit!) because the average result of 20d6 is about 70 points of damage! Probably the most common example of this is falling damage, which deals 1d6 bludgeoning damage for every 10 feet you fall, to a maximum of 20d6 damage. This means that if you take bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage from any source other than weapon attacks, this cantrip does nothing against it. The first and lesser limitation of the spell comes from the preciseness of its wording – note that the resistance gained only functions against weapon attacks that deal those damage types. There are some nuances here, both good and bad, which deserve further analysis. Looking very simply at the rules, this cantrip is very basic – you give up your action to become resistant to the three physical damage types. Until the end of your next turn, you have resistance against bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage dealt by weapon attacks. You extend your hand and trace a sigil of warding in the air. Final Thoughts: Is Blade Ward Good or Bad?.
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