But Umbral Sight works with normal darkness too, and if it doesn’t prevent magical or non-magical light from illuminating it, people don’t have to rely on darkvision to see them in that magical darkness (if it’s illuminated by anything). At least the Hallow darkness effect prevents illumination, so that does work for Gloom stalkers, but this is quite literally useless.

Hiding the spell and the action it takes are kind of superfluous to the jumping rule that says “[…] each foot you clear on the jump costs a foot of movement.”

Update: We finished the campaign last night on Friday the 13th (9/13/24). We all got out alive, with the majority of our loot, from the 23rd level, at level 19 (334411 XP 😁), but opted not to fight Halaster in the condition we were in.

All the information is on the task.

But you’d have to go outside the walls to get to the turrets. And you’re in a situation where you have someone who can cast 8th level spells. I’m not sure this advice is sound. 🤨

You don’t even need to homebrew. Spell scrolls exist. It’s not unreasonable to think a spell scroll of mighty fortress would be stored away for safekeeping somewhere for a long time before the PCs find it. 👍🏻

Still better than the 50,000 gp construction cost and 400 days for a “Keep or small castle” using Building a Stronghold. Actual time spent on labor amounts to a minute per week for a high enough level wizard.

Well, technically it doesn’t say your connecting walls have to be straight, just 80 feet long. Not exactly sure how you’re going to make them connect up into a hexagon or star out of “four turrets with square bases, each one 20 feet on a side and 30 feet tall, with one turret on each corner”, but if you’ve got a diagram I’d love to see it. 😆

The spell mighty fortress is very specific about the size and shape of the castle it makes, but not about where walls are connected. Both are 120’ square areas with four 20’ turrets connected by 80’ walls, but the second one you get more interior space and can access your turrets without leaving the outer walls.

You can make it permanent if you cast it 53 times, and by the time you hit level 15, 500gp for a week of downtime with comfort and security is occasionally worth it. Our druid/cleric regularly casts greater restoration rather than wait for me to prepare remove curse the next morning.

No. The worst is when, their attempts to thwart you don’t stop you from executing the plan, but do stop the plan from working, and then they blame you for your infeasible scheme failing— like they all knew it would.

You trigger after you take damage but before you fall unconscious, like numerous other triggers in the game. I just used the Strength Before Death example because it shows even without magic there’s enough time to squeeze a whole ass turn in between those two events.

You can’t “hit someone else”* because of the stipulations in contingency. RAI I’m sure they don’t want you sucking the life from your left buttcheek to close up the mortal wound in your gut, but based on what they wrote, I haven’t found a solid contradiction to this plan in the rules-as-written.

Also you can deal damage to something that is fully damaged. There’s even a specific rule for “Damage at 0 Hit Points.” under the Death Saving Throws section.

You’re still dealing damage, e.g. it could kill you from the massive damage rule if you dealt enough. Vampiric touch counts how much damage you deal, not how much hp the target loses.

Well, true polymorph and mass polymorph at least aren’t overpowered for their levels. Comparatively polymorph as commonly interpreted to be a “caster decides” effect, is routinely considered the best 4th level spell overall. It has better single-target save-or-suck disabling ability than banishment, it rival arcane eye in terms of scouting utility, and as emergency temporary healing or a combat buff it outperforms the 6th level Tenser’s transformation.

The only other 4th level spell that even comes close is the “caster decides” interpretation of conjure woodland beings, mostly because you get eight polymorphs for the price of one.

I’m in the middle of the 5e version at the moment. We’re level 11 and have reached floor 9 so far. We started December 1st of 2022 and play at least once a week.