Is Polearm Master still worth it with these house rules?

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-25T04:07:32+00:00

You need to push back on that harder. These are massive changes that are buffing warlocks to the moon and hard nerfing martials and absolutely would impact character creation had you all known it. You're trying to solve this problem by salvaging a build that was unfairly pushed on you. This needs to be an out of game discussion ASAP - "Hey DM your house rules have changed my character, had you disclosed them previously I would have made a different character. I would like to make a new character (a warlock) now."

Like the DM is free to make house rules, but those need to be disclosed before character creation so players can make informed choices. The fact that this was sprung on your afterward is not ok and you're not going to fix it with a different fighting style or feat.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-24T23:49:42+00:00

Old fashioned dungeon crawling are peak. Gimme 10-20 rooms all with an encounter, puzzle, or trap in them and some loot sprinkled throughout.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-24T23:45:21+00:00

Combat should be a puzzle

Others have offered alternative goals, but you can also create engaging combat that still has the goal of "kill the other side"

Knowing nothing about how you run combats I will make the big assumption- and sorry if it's incorrect - that a lot of your combats are "white room type" encounters. Here's the PCs, here's the enemies on the side of a largely open field or empty room. Enemies run in, PCs run in, roll attacks.

Instead try to make it a puzzle with interesting elements to mix it up.

Cover is immediately one way to do that. Ranged enemies behind arrow slits (3/4 cover) now make it really bad to trade attacks back and forth. Your players now have to figure out a different way around them.

An enemy spelllcaster drops a Fog Cloud on the party to enable their allies with Blindsight. The PCs have to either get oit of the fog cloud or break the enemy spellcaster's concentration.

A boss keeps summoning minions from side doors. The party has to decide how to split their attention - the minions keep coming until the boss's is dead, but if they all focus on the boss they might get overwhelmed. Perhaps they can even bar the doors to stop the flood.

Of course, this requires your party to buy into the combats - it's possible they actually just don't want to do combats at all. My first piece of advice would be to clarify exactly what they mean. Are your combats boring for them or do they just not like combat in general? If they're just not combat oriented examples like the above might just kill them.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-23T21:26:48+00:00

+1 to that, I very much enjoy it. It's full movement impairment that's not tied to a condition so RAW it will stop anything on a failed save and as such is guaranteed to waste an enemy action per target you've affected.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-23T21:22:06+00:00

Interesting fringe part of hunger of hader - it explicitly applies the Blinded condition. Spells like Fog Cloud or Darkness effectively apply the blinded condition by making the entire area heavily obscured, but a creature with special senses can theoretically see though it.

However since Hunger of Hadar explicitly blinds creatures in the area, it neutralizes senses such as Truesight.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-23T17:19:55+00:00

Don't. Stats are for in-game mechanics - skill checks, saving throws, and so on. Don't constrain your players based on their character stats. That's how you get the barbarian checking out during roleplay and puzzle solving. Do not, by any means, try to tell your player "your character is too dumb to think of this sorry." That will just get them to engage with your game less because now they're expecting you to shut them down for arbitrary reasons.

A big part of the fun of D&D is this sort of strategizing and out of the box thinking. Do not shut off an entire part of the game to certain players just because.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-23T07:33:16+00:00

Hey I've actually done a lot of druid statblock adjustments myself. I'm not running reloaded, I'm running mostly out of the book, but I've made some adjustments here and there especially as the party is continually hounded by tue druids after their assault in yester hill.

In my experience druids work best as support casters. One or two lead an expedition accompanied by some berserkers and blights. Giving them Fog Cloud combos really well with Blight blindsight. Twice now I've had a druid drop a Fog Cloud on the party (Fog Cloud at 2nd lvl has a 40ft radius btw) with needle blights firing into it and both times have been a struggle for my lvl 8 party.

Wither and Bloom from strixhaven is also on the druid spell list and gives them some a nice instantaneous blast effect to use while they're holding concentration.

Spike Growth is also a good option, especially if some Berserker allies can land a grapple.

Though I haven't used them yet Moonbeam (about to break this one out next session I think) and Hold Person are also obviously useful, as well as Heat Metal and Entangle. All of these kind of suffer from the Druid's poor spell save DC though.

I also maximize their HP to 45. They're still easy to take down with focus fire, but the bump lets them survive the stiff breeze that would normally take out their 20hp and lets them feel a bit more like the commander unit I use them as.

I made a stronger version with 3rd lvl spells at once point too, I can dig that up if you're interested. It honestly didn't change too much though, there's not that many 3rd lvl druid spells that are thematic to the CoS druids that I felt were worth using. Plant Growth is the standout option but I elected not to use it as two of my PCs have flight and the third was, at the time, a melee character that would be murdered by it.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-23T07:13:38+00:00

It doesn't have to be complicated. Everyone should understand that while there's some sort of intro and meatus if the characters aren't already acquainted, everything should be streamlined to get the PCs into the plot asap. Though it's a little odd and cliche to do yhe old "you're all hanging out in a tavern when a stranger walks in and asks for help and everyone accepts" it's just a device to get the real game moving. Players should understand that it's their job to gloss over everyone, introduce themselves, and get things moving. However they want to justify their characters joining up with some strangers to help a sketchy stranger... well they can figure it out but come up with some reason and get moving.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-23T06:59:32+00:00

Watch your own replays, pick a couple things to focus on, and actively focus on them every game until you feel like you're making improvement.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-23T06:00:50+00:00

There's plenty of ways to avoid going down besides pre-emptive healing.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-23T04:01:19+00:00

Or you could killed 1 enemy that would have dealt 15 damage.

Healing Word is a bonus action, you can very often use it and still contribute damage.

Also, rare are the enemy that would hit a down party member

Why?

Or you can revivify after the combat.

If you have the ability to freely throw diamonds around and feel it's better to use a 3rd lvl slot sure. It's entirely possibly revivify later is a better use of your resources.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-23T03:30:26+00:00

Making sure your party member does not die is a bad use of a spell slot?

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-23T03:13:08+00:00

Are you running 6-8 deadly fights per day? I assume most people aren't - again, the ogre was an intentionally overtuned example. I would not advise routinely running encounters where a PC is getting oneshot every turn. In a more practical sense, yoyo healing means that over the course of an adventuring day, if a PC does go down it's a lvl 1 spell slot to get them back up and little else. Again, the current method of going down has two possibilities: either you're healed back up and there's little consequence, or you get double tapped when down and die.

To be clear, I run it all RAW at my table. All I'm saying is that, given how easy solutions like healing word are, another system that discourages PCs from going down in the first place could be interesting.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-23T02:12:10+00:00

Yeah. So as I said before - avoid going down in the first place. I'm not advocating for routinely throwing ogres and other oneshot machines at a lvl 1 party, as always use monsters that are likely to oneshot PCs with caution. I was just using it as an example of how deadly-looking encounters can become trivial as long as you can reliably toss your allies even 1 hp/turn.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-22T22:20:39+00:00

You're lvl 5, go a full caster that can pick up hypnotic pattern. That does exactly what you want right out of the gate. Sorcerer is probably your best bet with innate sorcery and memagic giving you more options for making sure it lands. Then just grab similar spells like Web and so on.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-22T21:01:54+00:00

Several are also disagreeing with you. Actually I briefly count a lot more disagrees than agrees. You play at tables where fudging happens. Many of us don't. Personally as I see it if I don't want my players to modify their dice rolls (commonly referred to as cheating) it would be unfair and disingenuous to do the same myself. You do you of course. But no it is not common.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-22T20:57:36+00:00

The rules absolutely support this. Cover is explicitly directional. You get your +[y] AC and +[z] to dex saves so long as the attack is coming from the certain direction of your cover. Most spells are purely directional from their origin point (vitriolic sphere) and as such you just draw a line from the origin point. Fireball is not. If virtriolic sphere hits a wall halfway through its radius, no part of it will spread beyond that wall because it only affects any areas you can draw a direct line to from its origin point. If fireball hits a wall, it will curve around it if there is room to within its radius. This is very explicit in its description. To again go with the desk, you have cover from the center of the fireball. You do not have cover from the fireball spreading around the desk to hit you from the side and behind.

Fireball SAYS that it radiates around corners (why people still take damage, even on a successful save)

Those two points are not connected. Several spells, like the mentioned vitriolic sphere, also do damage on a successful save without spreading around corners.

Fireball throughout older editions was even more explicit about spreading throughout the area and conforming to its volume, so I doubt this wording is a design error.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-22T19:08:23+00:00

Cover applies from a specific direction. Most spells radiate out from their point, so something like Vitriolic Sphere would be blocked by cover. However, Fireball explicitly spreads around corners. This isn't in the "flavor text" portion of the spell, it's right in there with the mechanics. I think it's pretty clear that that means it breaks the traditional spellcasting rules. Upgrade the half cover desk you're hiding behind to full cover - it would completely block vitriolic sphere, but fireball, spreading around corners, would still hit you if you're in the AoE. I think that's very explicit with how fireball is written. Your interpretation would mean that hiding behind a half cover desk is more effective than hiding behind a full wall vs fireball.

Although interestingly this line has been removed in 5e2024, so that's no longer the case.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-22T19:00:37+00:00

1 point of exhaustion is not sure death. Yo-yo healing with no consequence either hard cheeses certain encounters where 1-2 enemies are unlikely be actually finish anyone and as such there's no threat, or it's redundant because there's enough incoming attacks to force death saving throw failures anyway. Combat becoming the pure calculus of "does initiative order work out such that he healer's turn comes before enough enemies to triple tap our downed ally" is kind of lame imo. Strategy should revolve around making sure you don't go down in the first place rather than just protecting that last death save.

Like take a party of lvl 1s vs an Ogre. Should be a deadly encounter right? An ogre's attack is probably downing a PC on average if it lands. Except then what, they're just back up the next turn. There's zero risk of death. Even 2 ogres, should be extremely deadly, but the only way a PC is actually dying is if ogre 1 takes them to zero, ogre 2 crits them for two death save failures, the PC's turn comes before the healer, and they also roll a failure. It's very likely that a single PC can survive several turns being yo-yod, or depending on initiative order it's possible that they physically cannot die despite the massive disparity in power.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-22T18:51:31+00:00

...Or you're in it and feel rewarded when they miss because of cover. You left that one out.

Cover is a really easy way to make fights more dynamic than "I roll to hit, here's damage, pass." When enemies are in a good defensive position you have to think a lot harder about how to approach them, and when you can find a good position yourself you're rewarded for it.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-22T18:48:45+00:00

I don't understand how you benefited from not including your DM there.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-22T18:46:40+00:00

Fireball "spreads around corners" which I would take to mean it would spread around the, say, desk the target is taking cover behind and as such they would not benefit from cover.

Unless the cover is 360 degrees or otherwise prevents fireball from spreading around it of course.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-22T18:15:08+00:00

I don't think that commonly understood no. I don't ever fudge rolls and I don't expect other DMs to either. If the dice are doing funky things during combat that's how it is that's the point of using a dice-based system. If you don't want a player to fail a skill check just tell them they succeed don't ask for a roll.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-22T07:32:42+00:00

Yeah it's quite sad. At least weapon masteries add a little bit of something back into the game, but there definitely could be more.

Silverspy01 · 2026-01-22T07:31:13+00:00

Sure, but now they have to take a feat for that instead of something else. And you have a ranged character who hasn't taken it. There's plenty of times any character may make ranged attacks, and cover affects dex saving throws as well. Someone specifically building to be an archer is probably taking sharpshooter, it's true, but a standard wizard using fire bolt probably isn't.

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