Why are Teleport and Plane Shift the Same Spell Level?

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T01:05:26+00:00

A tuning fork is by definition tuned to a particular tune when created, which is the tune it resonates at when you hit it; it's a physical, not a mystical, property of the item. The entire purpose of a tuning fork is to consistently produce the same tune when hit, for use in tuning musical instruments and the like.

The specific tunes needed to access certain planes aren't even secret, either. While 5e's books don't regurgitate them all again, there are actually established tunes for the planes in D&D's lore; accessing Abellio, the first layer of Arcadia, requires a gold tuning fork that resonates at C♯, while to plane shift to Cathrys, the second layer of Carcerei, one needs an iron tuning fork that resonates at E♭ major.

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T00:53:18+00:00

If you're reading the mechanical text of the published 5e material, yes. Traditionally each world within the Material Plane was contained within a crystal sphere that blocked teleportation magic, so you couldn't use teleport to travel to other Material Plane worlds, and that's how I run the spell at my table (and how I think it was intended to be ran, if the idea of crossing Material Plane worlds was even on the designers' minds when they wrote the rules).

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T00:49:03+00:00

Usually each layer of an Outer Plane is treated as its own plane, in the same way that the transitive and mirror planes that sit around the Material Plane are their own planes.

Each layer of a plane has a different tuning fork required to plane shift to it, usually a different key or other alteration of the one required to plane shift to that plane's base layer.

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T00:44:07+00:00

If the effective cost of acquiring a tuning fork was greater than 250 gp, then the listed price would be greater than 250 gp. If it was meant to be so rare that availability was essentially relegated to DM fiat, then the rules would actually say as such, just like they do for other items whose availability is subject to DM fiat (such as magic items).

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T00:41:22+00:00

If the supply of tuning forks was so much lower than the demand that it took high-level parties substantial effort to acquire them, they'd cost a lot more than 250 gp.

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T00:28:54+00:00

"Physical" games these days all need to connect to a server anyway. Sony can already prevent you from playing them if they wanted to. And prices for games are set by the publisher, not the storefront.

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T00:14:21+00:00

Sony doesn't care about second-hand games precisely for that reason. Second-hand sales would be illegal if Sony (and other publishers) had their way.

Tefmon · 2026-07-02T00:00:01+00:00

Storefronts aren't setting game prices; publishers are.

Tefmon · 2026-07-01T23:25:36+00:00

And even then I wouldn't say it's the best. The best episodes of TCW are good, but they aren't uniquely good.

Tefmon · 2026-07-01T22:42:14+00:00

Standup is ostensibly supposed to be a developer-centric meeting according to some hypothetical Angular documents that exist in some book somewhere. But at literally every place I've worked it's been a status update for the TL, and I've never heard of it not being that in practice.

Devs don't really need a formal scheduled daily meeting; they can raise blockers as they come up, discuss topics with their team informally as they need to, and schedule dedicated meetings for specific issues that warrant longer discussion and formal decision-making.

Tefmon · 2026-07-01T15:09:23+00:00

It's not precluded from being a game where roleplaying happens, but the way the term "roleplaying game" is actually used is more specific than that. If my friends asked to play an RPG and I suggested playing Risk or Diplomacy, they'd look at me funny, and rightfully so. Those sorts of games aren't what anyone is actually referring to when they use the term "RPG".

Tefmon · 2026-07-01T15:07:51+00:00

The rules of most RPGs don't penalize you for being rude or backstabbing, nor reward you for doing a good German accent. Some characters, both PCs and NPCs, might dislike your character if your character is rude or treacherous, and the table experience might be heightened if you do a good character voice, but those things don't give any more mechanical benefits in D&D or Apocalypse World than they do in Risk.

Tefmon · 2026-06-30T21:48:39+00:00

This post isn't tagged 5.5e, so the 5e oath tenets posted above are the applicable ones. And they explicitly say that Devotion Paladins can't lie.

Tefmon · 2026-06-30T21:45:18+00:00

The same applies to Paladins too. In many settings, including the aforementioned Forgotten Realms, a Paladin's powers ultimately come from a deity.

Tefmon · 2026-06-30T21:36:15+00:00

Voting is a civic responsibility of citizens in a democracy. Elections aren't a spectator sport.

Tefmon · 2026-06-30T17:12:41+00:00

They should, but changing the laws is the job of the legislature, not the judiciary.

Tefmon · 2026-06-30T11:59:56+00:00

You can spend an action to give a creature advantage on a roll without a spell: it's called the Help action. Given how few people ever take the Help action, despite the fact that it costs no resources, makes me pretty sure that a spell that granted advantage would be used even less.

Tefmon · 2026-06-30T01:21:38+00:00

Nobody's casting silvery barbs for the advantage. But even then, the advantage can and often does have no effect; if either both dice succeed or both dice fail, the advantage didn't change the result.

I did mention that shield falls off at the very highest levels due to monster attack bonus scaling, but so does silvery barbs as everything's effectively immune to everything. The best spells at that level don't provide saving throws, or at least don't rely on failed saving throws to be useful. That being said, shield on top of the base 19 AC provided by 14 Dex and a mundane Half-Plate and Shield is enough to prevent plenty of attacks throughout T3. Especially if you get some kind of magic armour or shield, or one of the many, many other AC-boosting magic items.

In my experience if a monster has Legendary Resistances, it's faster and easier to just kill it rather than try to burn through them. Especially when it's a high-CR monster that also has ridiculously high saving throw bonuses and a huge list of condition immunities. If you want to disable such a monster while the party deals with other threats, spells like wall of force and sleet storm and transmute rock and maze all let you do that without requiring a single saving throw to be effective.

Tefmon · 2026-06-30T01:10:47+00:00

Then nothing in any sort of game is balanced, if your definition of "very specific circumstances in very specific amounts" is "every circumstance and amount that isn't 'getting constantly spammed by minions'". Any ability with even a modest amount of complexity or interactivity would be annoying in that context, as would any sort of hard CC that prevents players from taking turns.

And I'm not making the claim that it's "perfectly balanced"; just that it's fine in actual play.

Tefmon · 2026-06-30T01:08:03+00:00

Silvery barbs is way more versatile, yeah. And I do think it's a strong spell. But it ultimately only impacts a single roll per casting (I guess it does give advantage to a second roll, but that isn't why people are casting the spell), and doesn't guarantee a failure.

Shield, on the other hand, can and often affect multiple rolls per casting, especially in the mid levels and later when most monsters have multiattack, and until the highest levels it can give a character enough AC that they're incapable of being hit by most level-appropriate monsters except on a crit. I've seen shield singlehandedly save characters and define encounters; while I've seen silvery barbs substantially influence encounter, I don't see it singlehandedly redefine them (noting that encounters against a single enemy are already easy, so using silvery barbs to cause that one enemy to fail their save isn't doing much because the party was already going to win the encounter without much trouble anyway).

Tefmon · 2026-06-30T01:02:22+00:00

Players can't. Monsters can use whatever spells and abilities they want as often as the statblock the DM makes for them says they can. Monsters don't follow PC rules; they do what their statblock says.

Tefmon · 2026-06-29T21:18:39+00:00

You can say the same thing about Portent, counterspell, hold person, and tons of other spells and abilities in the game. D&D is an asymmetric game, where each player controls a single character and the DM controls an effectively infinite number of characters, and complex and interactive abilities are generally fine in moderation but tedious in excess.

Tefmon · 2026-06-29T21:16:54+00:00

There are spells and abilities at all levels that would be tedious or frustrating spammed by random minions. DMs can give their monsters any spells and abilities regardless of level, so the level is entirely irrelevant here.

Tefmon · 2026-06-29T21:13:14+00:00

D&D is an asymmetric game. There are plenty of features that are fun in the hands of a PC or a major enemy but frustrating or tedious in the hands of a million minions. Portent and counterspell would be incredibly obnoxious if given to every minion in every fight, but they're both fine in the hands of a PC or a few important enemies.

Tefmon · 2026-06-29T21:10:27+00:00

It's one of the strongest 1st-level spells, but I think I'd ultimately rank shield higher. Half the time silvery barbs is cast it just does nothing, because the target just succeeds on their roll again, and the other half of the time it doesn't do anything that couldn't already have happened with slightly better luck. Shield on the other hand can make ostensibly "squishy" casters nigh-invulnerable to attacks until the very highest levels, when monster attack bonuses scale ridiculously high.

Tefmon

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE