siegfriedliner's page

When i envision brace i think raised pikes at the battle of Helms Deep, part of the reason those tactics work is that horses don't like running into spikes and neither do people. So my visualisation of bracing is inherently obvious. By there very nature most of the braced weapons are big and imposing.

So in practice the katana is a long saber (long curved blade)

Its good for slashing and was used mounted its less good at piercing than a long swords (which are more squared off structured around thrusting).

Deadly does meet the thematics of Katana having a reputation for being lethal.

D6 is the damage for a short sword which seems a little low.

Maybe an advanced d8 deadly slashing (not versatlile) weapon would fit. But d6 and deadly seems a reasonable compromise.

Lay on Hands is probably as spamable as any of the cantrips psychic provides and can also be gotten as a dedication, i have seen a lot of people build around medic far more than psychic, acrobat can be massive too, someoneone knocked double slice but if i am dual wielding or facing moderate resistance it makes me more powerful and whilst that may be situational i control the situation. Psychic is a strong option amongst strong options not ridiculous outlier like thr exemplar.

exequiel759 wrote:

There's even examples of really cheap magic items which are used in certain regions which are widely accesible to even the townsfolk, so why make it so non-mages can't activate certain magic items other because it used be like that in older editions?

Because casters are special. Really special. And must be.

Don't agree? Than all casters must get their 8-10 hps per level, any armor they want and weapons mastery on the level of melee classes if not the Figther. How is that you said? Oh, yes: "PF2e is built around heroic fantasy"! Great! Let's get rid of "squishy casters" once and for all! I'm all for it.

Casters are special because they have a good number of high level spells (for what ever you are). Martials gaining assess to a few spells at low dc's doesn't break the game.

Obviously tailwind is interesting its a bit of a non brainer one feat a level 2 wand is cheap for +10 bonus to speed and speed optomisation is important.

Setting Magus aside, the problem with it is that the Dedication is way out of whack with other Dedication feats. It gives you a LOT for a single feat, including the signature ability of the class.

It's not the strongest dedication feat compared to spirit warrior and exemplar it's weaker, compared to two weapon fighter (double slice), paladin (scaling armour proficiency, skill access to a strong focus spell and reaction), rogue (light armour proficiency, skill feat and two proficiencies), blessed one (powerful focus spell) it's on par.

I am not declaring it as weak it's a top tier dedication but given it's I'm the middle of the best dedication feats it's not an outlier.

On the one hand psychic is the best caster multiclass dedication feat because it gives a lot in one feat.

On the other hand its not the best caster archytype being weaker than bard and sorcerer as a whole imo (its at least comparable).

Its also not the best multiclass dedication feat, rogue and champions both get a lot for their entry feat enough to be comparable.

Its not the best archtype dedication feat,the two weapon fighting archytype, blessed one, spirit warrior, exemplar all get powerful abilities you can build around that are stronger or at least comparable.

People probably think its too strong for 2 reasons magus synergy (more an issue with magus than psychic imo) and because its nice as a free gift with human and ancient elf free dedication feat which sees it as a common pick.

Given the main issue is a magus issue it think adjustments are needwd there rather than here.

It's not like the caster has their bearings; it's only the player's meta-knowledge that provides the data the PC needs. So how are they getting that data? Can't detect the spot, then can't discern it's the spot you want. So 50% miss chance at minimum, say if an ally points out the direction to shoot or you're using a line AoE vs. a noisy enemy (or cone with near certainty). Unless the caster's dropping it on themselves of course.

But yeah, I'd certainly let them cast it. Hard to say they can't. Just beware, it's a literal shot in the dark.

ETA: There's a maxim for battle to seldom trust your eyes and never trust your ears. Such a cacophony A pitched battle would be very loud, with all kinds of actions packed into seconds, made worse if inside like many are.

So when your blinded enemies and allies are hidden to your rather than undectected so you do maintain a knowledge of where everyone is to the nearest 5ft square.

There are a couple of ways I could see unleash being changed that would keep the risk reward

The witchwarper way, unleash is a free action on iniative but has to be sustained, as well as the sustain action you can sustain by casting an amped psychic cantrip or unleashed psyche action if you fail to sustain then stupify.

The inventor way - make a skill roll based on your subconscious mind as an action on a failure get spell level x 1 damage, on a success X2 and on a crit success X3 on a crit fail stupify.

They built an anti-war PC for an AP w/ "war" in its title? Awkward.

And does he not think the party's an actual squad? Because it is. Squads aren't only military (who aren't only war), they can be police officers, firefighters too. Assuming he's heroic in the least, he should be able to accept a squad for such civic duty.

It is ill luck that Paizo kept Commander rather than a less hierarchical name, but that doesn't mean his PC is accepting your PC's authority, only their insight, sense of timing, etc., like a boxer's coach where it's still the boxer in charge.

With that small a party (and such a high level) I'm surprised you'd want to try a Commander. Even if the Champion's player plays ball, that and Guardian make for poor synergy w/ Tactics anyway (compared to other classes, not dysfunctional). It's just those three class tend to live vicariously by supporting the offense of others, so I hope they both went with big weapons at least. Seems that Druid's going to be working overtime, even as they're protected like a prince.

So yeah, glad you're considering switching back, maybe waiting for better opportunity w/ less adversarial RPers and class synergy.

So far having cold iron weapons and holy rune go a incredibly long way to making any melee builds viable against demons.

Also we have free archytpes and my commander is an eagle knight with two attacks of opportunity which can also be triggered by someone attacking an ally that alone should keep my damage at a reasonable level.

We have 3 high ac heavy armor martials with a lot of damage mitigation so even if we're not doing great damage might still function attritionally. Also the fact I don't have two melee martial allies means I won't end up spamming Demoralising charge which means I will have a lot more freedom when it comes to tactic choice I might use slip and sizzle etc.

I think I will just go for it and see how a commander fairs in a 3 person party. We only have 3 levels left so even if it's not great it will be fun to try.

They know that I have enough free reactions that they won't have to give up their reactions they even stated they didn't want the free reactions. They are mostly a gm and they are very inflexible when it comes to flavour, things are what they are in they don't want to debate nuance.

So I know they won't change their mind or compromise so it's comes down to do I compromise and how do I compromise and how do I stop my irritation from negatively affecting the game.

So we were playing Spore Wars and the commander came out and as a real lover of the warlord in 4e I was super excited for the commander so I asked to retire my old character and play one and the GM was happy.

So to set the scene we had a four person party a guardian (recently changed from an anamist because he thought the class was cool and wasn't enjoying the anamists complexity) a liberator champion (on holiday) and a caster druid.

So I built an 18th level warlord and was really happy I had a couple of tactics that gave movement to multiple allies and multiple melee strikes which I thought would be really cool and effective we played one session when the champion was away and I had fun.

The champion came back from holiday and told me he woudn't be squad mate because he felt that made his character too much like a soldier and he is antiwar.

So I was a little off put if he wasn't a squad mate he couldn't benefit from my class features and that means I needed to rethink my whole build.

I am also a little bemused for him not wanting to feel like a soldier in the war ap where we are irregulars for the Elven Crown.

So how should I handle this shift back to my old character, should I percervier with my commander and does any one have some build advice for a high level commander in a party with a guardian and a druid (caster).

Is it reasonable to say I won't engage with his characters class features infuture so he can't champions react for me, I don't flank with him and don't benefit from his aura etc.

What would you do ?

Squiggit wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

suddenly turned it into

To be clear, the text of the tumble through ability has not changed meaningfully since PF2 released, so "suddenly turned into" is an incorrect assessment.

This isn't even the first time it's come up in rules discussions.

It's never been a replacement or equivalent to stride.

I don't know about you but I have had at least a dozen ocasions where tumble through has amounted to nothing but a stride because I have failed the check or misjduged difficult terrain and a large enemy space and couldn't make it all the way through.

So my tumble through followed by a strike on an enemy was in practice the exact same in both actions costs and effects as me striding and striking. See fairly equivalent to me.

siegfriedliner wrote:

The tumble through action is clear how it works and Michael response was clear that developers were aware of how the action works and built the ability accordingly.

Your free to do things at your table how you like but you are basically allowing a vibe check to overrule relatively clear mechanics.

It is cheesing a rule, pure and simple.

Tumble Through is not a replacement for a Stride. They are separate actions.

I agree they are separate actions a stride action allows you to move move your land speed across the ground.

A tumble though allows you to stride, swim, fly, climb as long as you have the respective speed and during this movement you can (but not must) attempt to move through another creatures space.

The tumble through action is clear how it works and Michael response was clear that developers were aware of how the action works and built the ability accordingly.

Your free to do things at your table how you like but you are basically allowing a vibe check to overrule relatively clear mechanics.

Dragon quite often have fly speeds in the several hundred feet and so are extremely adept at hit and run tactics and the spellcasting variant can keep 120ft away whilat area effecting pcs.

In an open space they can be impossible for certain parties to deal with if they skirmish or even if the party can skirmish the fights can be drawn out games of tag which can make an encounter take too long.

But this does mean dragons are often uniquely challenging which fits for an archetype monster. Also interestingly fast speed seems more inconic to dragons in pathfinder 2e than breath weapons which you can find reskinned on a massive variety of monsters.

This is the theoretical max I think you can get with one round of buffing, this assumes you are a L18 bard for eternal composition who has grabbed All For One and beast master.

1st Action (hasted) + Corageous Anthem Fortimo +3 attack and damage to all allies

2nd Action Demoralise/ Scare to Death - Frightened Two

3rd Action - True Targets - Advantage roughly worth 4 points

4th Action - All For One

Free Action - Pet Flanks +2

Reaction - Aid + 4

So you give + 9ish too all allies in range of your effects (+5 with Advantage)
and that one special ally who is flanking with your pet gets +15ish (+11 with advantage).

The time I felt most frustrated with the finisher system is with the gymnast where your gymnast mechanics mech terribly with your finisher mechanics so I endwd up frequently ignoring finishers in favours of trips and grapples and derring do. If you take reactive strike and have a fighter or ranger worth standstill in the party your be fine damage wise but ignoring a main class feature is a little sad. But that was with the old edition haven't played a remastered on yet.

He cares ABOUT evil dragons, but he doesn't care FOR evil dragons.

Your area of concern doesn't have to be something you like. It's just something you pay attention to.

I am going to assume the Izaya logic of loving "Humans" as a plurality but pretty much hating people.

There are a couple of things about the warped by rage feat for exemplar that I am not certain about and was wondering if their was consensus.

First the feats calls at that it can used with both a worn and a body eikon and then says you can choose to forgo the immanence effect when your body eikon becomes empowered.

Do people take this as am admission that they forgot that you could use this feat with worn eikons or intentionally making it so that if you have this on a worn eikon you can't choose to forgo the immanence effect?

Dwarf fighters can build themselves pretty much your going to be slow so I commend unburdened iron and heavy armour.

Then it comes down to how you perceive yourself fighting if you want to wield two weapons double slice is almost mandatory.

If you want to be a duelist wielding a one handed weapon in one hands and grappling manuevering with the other then snagging stance is great, so is combat grab and dueling parry at 2. I recommend sudden charge as generally useful even more for the slow dwarf.

For all maritals I rate speed increasing items and feats, so maybe get fleet and boots of bounding at later levels as having to spend another action or not getting to strike because your off by 5 or 10 feet of movement and can't reach an enemy is always annoying.

This isn't really a feat advice but if you wield a polearm or reach weapon your reactive strike feature will likely end up being substantially more powerful and see quite a few reach fighters with slam down who are looking to create as many reactions triggers as possible.

Transpose is a tenth level summoner feat that lets you switch places with your eidolon (via teleportation) it's kind of cool.

I was thinking that for a necromancer having a similar feat to switch positions with their thralls would be very cool and would add some mobility to thralls they don't currently have.

One of the concerns people have is runes stacking together to do a massive amount of damage.

I was wondering if the solution could be that when you invoke two damage ruins instead of getting one each of effect you get a new composite effect based on both those runes.

In practice it would mean you would need a smaller number of starting runes to balance the number of combination effects but I recon it would be pretty cool to be able to combo your runes into different effect.

Personally if I wanted to make the rune smith more martial, I would create resonance effects where a rune inscribed on your weapon interacts with a rune inscribed on the enemy for some sort of effect alongside invoking one of the runes.

Like for example if you had a wind rune on your weapon and the enemy had a fire rune whacking them would instead of the usual firey burst effect create a flaming vortex ring that does perhaps half damage but imbolised on a failed save and does some additional damage if they are still immobilised in the ring at the end of their next turn.

Quote:

This is one of the things which I think shows how what the hobby treats as the traditional view on what meta-gaming is and what should be done about it are rooted in inherently GM-versus-players mentality.

To be honest, calling "metagaming" is usually a way to try to bludgeon disruptive players back into line. I don't think there's a consensus view on what is and isn't metagaming—and there definitely won't be one for a game designed to be a tactical game like PF2E.

Heck, "metagaming" is viewed very unusually in most online 2E discussion spaces. For example, when was the last time you heard anyone say, "But your magus has no reason to suddenly gain psychic powers—that's metagaming!" Yet that is precisely one way (and a very common way) to bludgeon people with the metagaming hammer in other games. "Why are you doing this optimized build that makes no sense for you in-character? That's metagaming!"

I also think there's never been a clear line across the hobby on what metagaming even is. A lot of puzzle-filled dungeon crawls are fairly metagamey, and are designed as challenges to the player rather than a challenge to the player's character. Is it metagaming to use OSR tactics in these situations, like the 10ft pole or using water to check for traps? Does it depend on if your character would think of it themselves? Different tables tend to fall in different places on this issue.

Besides, even if the person described in the original post is clearly being a bit silly, I think there's reasonable arguments not far from where they are. Things that are good play (like using Bon Mot before Synesthesia) can indeed begin to feel a bit metagamey to some sensibilities. I can reasonably see someone asking, "Why do you always insult them before you cast spells at them? That's oddly calculated and repetitive. Would your character really do that? Isn't it pretty mean? You're so nice out of combat." Likewise, it'd be fair to ask, "Why are you casting Fear all the time? Do you enjoy people being scared...

I take it as written that caster know that irritated and afraid enemies are more susceptible to mental magic and ruthlessly exploit any advantage they can get. Because exploiting all advantages is the only way to become and old or experienced adventurer.

Ravingdork wrote:

"our characters don't possess any knowledge of the game's mechanics; of every +1 that they can get. I'm not going to metagame."

Nice. Toxic metagaming in the opposite direction.

Yes, a certain level of metagaming is necessary for the players to be able to tell a shared story.

There is also a certain amount of 'railroading' that is necessary too.

I always assumed characters new how their mechanics work so s rogue knows that they are good at taking advantage of an enemy bring distracted by an ally.

Rune of Clumsiness
Whilst inscribed on a person they are clumsy 1

When invoked they must make a reflex save or fall prone and take some bludgeoning damage from a dramatic prattfall. Possibly 1d6 per two levels due to the inclusion of the prone effect.

Damaging runes scale in line with blast spells (fireball, lightning bolt etc) at 2d6 those damages can be fair high and usually just above that of a strike and are balanced against being two actions and only once per turn.

Now from reading the feats and actions are designed with spamming runes in mind so you can have 2-3 going off per average per round with a little optimisation. So it appears that the runes have been designed to be used several times a turn like strikes but without the limitations of MAP and with damage on par or better than strikes which seems stranger.

What is even stranger is how throughly the designers have been conservative especially in the playtest before this in limiting the damage of at will spell like abilities for example the kineticists could only dream of having a damaging effect that scales at 2d6 each level where the runic smith can do it multiple times per turn and later include some area effects with considerably smoother action economy.

Which has me questioning why the change to a more adverenturous design choice.

So one damage invocations seem to be appropriate in terms of damage for two actions.

So then balance wise unless they substantially nerf the damage they are going to have to probably limit you to either one invocation per action or make tracing two actions.

Perhaps having it scale a 1d8 would be the best bet.

pH unbalanced wrote:

The one thing I just want to be sure and say is that I am not interested in playing a Runesmith as a blaster. I want to play it as a competent martial who can provide meaningful party buffs and other support. I would expect to get more value from etchings than from invoking.

This isn't to say that I don't want blasting to be viable -- because I hope it is able to support that playstyle for people who want it. I just hope that the power curve on the blasting isn't *so* high that they have to weaken the parts of the toolkit that I am actually interested in to keep its overall power in line.

Thank you.

When one imagines a martial Runesmith, do high explosives enter the picture? Heck, does tagging Runes on enemies themselves as one's default attack routine spring to mind? Right now, free hand + shield w/ boss/spikes is the best supported build.
This whole blaster aspect, esp. at will and competitive, boggles me.

what I am getting from the class in terms of imagery is more of an anime magic user who puts lots of exploding magic circles on thing. It's not an aesthetic I dislike.

siegfriedliner wrote:

Personally I think given the current rune scaling there probably shouldn't be an option for a 1 action trace.

This would still leave the class doing decent damage but not quite so overwhelming.

It would also make their action routine incredibly boring

2 action trace>something
2 action trace>invoke

Repeat

That best thing about this class right now is yes versatility and creativity with it's action compression. It's the exact opposite of a Magus and that makes it great.

I maintain invoke being once a round and scaling in 2d4 would be enough.

But I'd cave to 1d8/6 scaling to keep this level of interactivity and creativity.

Personally I am not convinced the action economy would be boring you have traced, invoke

The trace, ranged detonation

Then engraving strike, invoke

Then at 6 trace,trace
Trace, invoke over two turn
Or move strike invoke

So lots of options

Personally I think given the current rune scaling there probably shouldn't be an option for a 1 action trace.

This would still leave the class doing decent damage but not quite so overwhelming.

I am of the mind that they best way to dismiss thralls is to explode them with any of the number of focus spells and feats that let you do so, so adding more feats that let you do that would be great.

I do have issues with crste thrall by the biggest is that you only get 1 for the first 6 levels and that makes using all the cool way to destroy them a little too action intensive.

So my version would look like this

1 Action Flourish, 30ft range
You conjure forth two expendable undead thralls in range. If you have the expert necromancy class feature, you can create up to three thralls, increasing to four thralls if you have master necromancy and five if you have legendary necromancy. When you cast the spell, you can have up to one thrall created by this spell make a melee unarmed Strike using your spell attack modifier for the attack roll. This attack deals your choice of 1d6 bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage. This Strike uses and counts toward your multiple attack penalty. You can choose the sacrifice a number of thralls equal to or less than the amount you can create with this spells to do additional 1d6 void damage per thrall you sacrificed in this way.

Heightened (+2) The damage increases by 1d6

Finoan wrote:

Thrall wrote:

A thrall has 1 Hit Point, is automatically hit by attacks, and automatically fails all saving throws.

Adding 10 to that save bonus to convert it into a save DC ...

still doesn't make these checks saving throws. Which are rather specific checks. The question isn't whether you can make acceptable homerule, you can. The problem is that rules aren't complete.

Your correct one of the reason I brought it up was so people might flag it in the playtest feedback.

But it's not an entirely awful assumption that a DC of 10 plus automatically fail saves (basically an amount that ensure they always fail but never critically fail) equals a DC of automatically succeeds but does not critically succeed. Especially given that is how attacks work for thralls.

Thrall wrote:

A thrall has 1 Hit Point, is automatically hit by attacks, and automatically fails all saving throws.

Adding 10 to that save bonus to convert it into a save DC ...

I guess means that any maneuver action will automatically succeed (but not critically succeed).

That's my take.

This maybe be play style issue but if I am putting a lot of thralls near enemies it's probably to save my allies and actions to flank and that isn't the situation I would use necrotic bomb which I would probably use by placing a thrall next a several enemies and detonating on the spot.

I understand you point but why you will care about to use an Escape/Stand action when you can create another thrall with same action and Strike?

About critical in manuvers if you was able to critical success a thrall with a Trip you will just kill it like as you Strike it. If you use Grab and critical hit you will restrain it but as I said before try to escape makes no sense when you can create a new thrall with one-action without any checks.

Basically debuff thralls is senseless due how cheap and fragile they are and the fact that most focus spell doesn't really make then attack but uses then as fuel.

Mainly just for the 40hp grappling thrall, the 200 hp whacking thrall and the 400 hp thrall that leaves smaller thralls in its wake.

Currently there is a little uncertainty on what the DC for save based dcs (trip, tumble through etc) for thralls.

My take is that like AC if people use these maneuverd they get an automatic success but not a critical success.

So you can reliably tumble through them but they still are difficult terrain

It's worth noting that currently the focus spells thralls that move have no ability to stand up from prone so they probably need immunity to prone, grabbed or at least the ability to crawl, standup, escape ( probably using your spell attack).

Being 1d8 behind amped IW—which is a melee-only spell on a 6 HP class—seems right to me. It is very painful at level 1, though.

Given bone spear is nominally three actions ideally over two turns to avoid map I rate IW higher.

I am not sure why bone spear doesn't start at 2d8.

I really like the necromancer it's cool and looks like it would be fun to play.

The most powerful feature the necromancer seem to have besides spellcasting is above average focus/ grave spells which are pretty cool and utilise their thrall mechanic.

But power wise I suspect it might be a little weak especially when compared to the new oracle and animist who have similar defences, double the spell slots and also very powerful focus spells which are comparable in strength with the necromancers grave spells.

Half the spell slots for class that seem to have similarish chassis seems like a fairly punishing. I wonder if the class could afford to be three slot ?

This is morevfeedback for the 20th level thrall grave spells but they need the option to get up from prone otherwise they are completely stymied by a 1 action trip.

When it comes to 20th level necromancer feats two stand tall, one of them knocks enemies prone and drops lots of your thralls where you want them and tanks by taking up space and having a tonne of hp the other let's your thrall do respectable damage and tank a little.

Both will benefits lots from the almost mandatory effortless concentration. Personally I feel living graveyard is way cooler but perfected thrall might be more powerful at that level because creating lots of thralls is quite easy.

What do you think ?

That went away with alignment

Mastery of Life and Death currently only seems to do anything for necromancy grave spells and feats where it lets you ignore immunity to void damage from being undead and immunity vitality damage from being alive. As necromancy grave spells and features don't call out living or undead target specifications.

Pretty much all the spells that do void or vitality damage call out targets and this ability doesn't do anything for them.

Thematically this is kind of annoying but it does stop spells like vitality lash and sunburst suddenly becoming way better because of removing the target limitation that were a part of the balance of those spells so probably it's intended.

SuperBidi wrote:

Easl wrote:

That sounds like a great build for Ruby Phoenix or another high level campaign. But, sometimes it's not the destination it's the journey. "My level 8+..." is for many campaigns close to the destination, it's not the journey. So I'm happy to see cleric get a class archetype that gives 'aura gish' as a hit-the-ground-running option.

At low level, the Battle Harbinger is fine as a bunch of rank 1 spells is a nice feature up to level 4. It's at level 5 that their Font starts being lackluster. At level 7, it's hardly a feature and that's the moment where you'll feel like a second grade character.

And while I agree the journey is important, no one cares about a character effectiveness at level 1. The end of the journey is much more important than the beginning.

I mean, a lot of the mechanical benefits of their 1st rank spells are not unlike the Bard's, and if a Bard can maintain +1's from 1 to 20 and be considered a powerhouse class, so can the Battle Herald.

Bard still has better proficiencies, scaling, and spell list, but this is coming across as if a +1 status bonus to attack rolls or AC is bad after 5th level, when the tight math and constant relevance says otherwise.

They are 1 action spells with a much bigger natural area effect and a lot of feats support.

But even so they still feel less impressive at later level unless they are suplmented by haste, herorism, synaesthesia etc spells the bard have a much more of at a higher DC.

siegfriedliner wrote:

I think the font should include options for herorism and gizarjanes march because I don't like the fact it's a feature that should be giving them a a scaling resources but is instead giving them a first level spell slot from 1-20

Heroism would fit. For it to include an AP spell specifically practiced by the Terwa Lords would be surprising, though.

I agree it won't happen but as scaling battle aura with sustain effect it does very neatly fit mechanically.

I think the font should include options for herorism and gizarjanes march because I don't like the fact it's a feature that should be giving them a a scaling resources but is instead giving them a first level spell slot from 1-20

In starfinder 1e pretty I went full borg, I was playing a melee solarian and there was a good leg mod that boosted speed that let me get into melee super quick, once I started I thought how much of my characters body could I replace until I stopped being my character (ship of thesus) you know you have gone off the deep end when you are adding necromantic flesh nodules to your brain. That was kind of fun from a cool thing as long as I don't overthink it perspective.

Now personally I am ok with augmenting yourself being more powerful and have faith wealth constraints will mostly balance it.

I think most people who get shot at on daily basis would see the merits of bullet resistant skin and being in that environment most people would get on board not to fall behind.

So we encountered some creatura who we couldn't speak to and I had a spell that would allow me to do that and a bardic level diplomacy. So I may have gotten a little excited and thought yes finally an opportunity to use this spell which had ended being far more niche than I expected it to be.

Then they attacked rolled well in initative when the party rolled poorly went first attacked our barbarian who didn't appreciate being attacked and immediately counter attacked.

At that point it became a combat problem rather than a communication one.