In Dungeons and Dragons, there have been plenty of "trash" spells over the years. Spells you wouldn’t pick, as they won’t be very useful or are too niche to be worth taking up a slot in your roster. Players and GMs alike will argue over these kinds of spells for hours. Likewise, there are plenty of spells and effects that combine to enhance each other. One example would be casting Grease and Fog over the same area, limiting both your enemies' vision and their mobility. If you’re feeling murder hobo-ish, another might be Sleep and Fireball - keeping your enemies in one spot and then flambéing them. What about Trash Compactor? You don’t know what that is? The thought is to Polymorph an enemy into a small or tiny creature, then cast Resilient Sphere (sometimes known as Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere), release the Polymorph, and watch as your enemy is turned into a thick slurry of meat, blood, and bone. If you follow the blog, you’ll know that seeing a ridiculous description written out like this one is likely to mean another edition of... Never Say Dice Ruins Your Memes! If you haven’t, take a moment to go read Divine Bovine, Them Bones, and Peasant Rail Gun, and you’ll know where we’re going this time. So…Will it work?
Fear the Sphere?
Seasons don’t fear the sphere, nor do the sun, the wind, nor the rain. So why should we? The answer is we shouldn’t, as this combo is very unlikely to work. Even if it partly does, you’re unlikely to get the enemy gazpacho you're craving. Let's delve into why. The situation described above glosses over one important factor: the saving throw. The story, as passed along to the Never Say Dice desks, just hand-waves it. So, for the sake of discussion, we’ll say the Polymorph works… now what? In actual play, your adversarial target is going to get a Wisdom saving throw to avoid the Polymorph effect. Your plan could be done right then and there. Not only that, but if the target happens to be some sort of shape-changer they’re going to automatically succeed. Sure, though, perhaps you succeed on that part of the plan, or there's some other academic reason we agree to hand-wave it. The meme also neglects to mention that the target would also get a saving throw for the Resilient Sphere, this time a Dexterity saving throw. That's two saving throws on two different stats that the target would have to have to fail before this even has a chance at working.
Even if the target fails these saves (or we just hand-wave them for the sake of argument) there are still a few problems. It's important to mention here that these are both concentration spells - meaning you need to focus on them to keep them up. You’re going to need a second caster who has access to the correct spell at the correct time in order to pull this off. Otherwise, you’re going to need some other sort of chicanery to use two attention-splitting spells. At some point, though, after arranging all of that, you still get pulled down into arguing over the rules as written for spells and the mechanics in general. The size of the sphere, for instance, may be an issue. The description states “the sphere is weightless and just large enough to contain the creature or object inside.” Does that really mean you’re only getting a hamster sized ball for a hamster-morphed opponent? Or is there a size limit to the sphere itself?
Another semantic argument that might come up regards the part of the description stating "Nothing—not physical objects, energy, or other spell effects—can pass through the barrier, in or out, though a creature in the sphere can breathe there." While ending a spell isn’t exactly a "spell effect," you’d be making a big assumption that "dropping" Polymorph is going to happen instantaneously. It could be argued that the magical tie/release of Polymorph wouldn’t even happen until the spell could "reconnect" once the sphere was gone. Likewise, another semantic issue would be regarding damage: "a creature or object inside can’t be damaged by attacks or effects originating from outside, nor can a creature inside the sphere damage anything outside it." Again that "effect," and again it's just as likely a DM would rule that the sphere changes size as Polymorph drops so that the effect of Polymorph resolving wouldn’t indirectly damage the target. After all, we're dealing with magic here.
Spin me right round
So could it work? Well, depending upon how your DM rules... it might work. But, as pointed out in the previous editions of Never Say Dice Ruins Your Memes, do you really want to hand this tactic over to the DM for use against you and your fellow compatriots? Besides, you’d be using up two 4th level spell slots when there are plenty of other fun things one could use. Things like Banishment, Blight, and Ice Storm. just to name a few. Even on successful saves against Blight or Ice Storm, two spell slots on either of those will still do a fair amount of damage - on average 26 or 23, respectively. You may even get full hits and average 52 or 46 damage on two spell usages. Certainly, that's less of a risk than trying out a wild-sounding combo. Although we like to reward creativity in our games, and at this point Never Say Dice should probably send apologies to HamaSamaKun who keeps putting out these creative videos that players send to our desks. So like our readers, until next week, I hope you enjoy your wild ideas, your dice, and your tables.
- A
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