Talk:Eldritch Insight (5e Charm)

Quality Article Nomination

This article is a current quality article nominee as of 02:37, 17 August 2022 (MDT). Quality articles exemplify D&D Wiki's very best work, and therefore must meet the quality article criteria. Please discuss the page's merits below.

I think this is a well-written article that fits in well with the established power and mechanics of charms. It's flavorful and interesting, none of the charms are too powerful, but the powers make me excited as a GM. Warlocks and similar would love receiving a charm from this table, and they'd love rolling on it even more. I definitely think it fits Quality Article standards. vladulenta (talk) 02:37, 17 August 2022 (MDT)

• Comment — I have some concerns with this charm's effects.

First, the sphere of annihilation from the Star of Doom. When does it move (in combat)? Does it move on your turn, in response to your movement? Or is there some delay? What happens if you move into a group of your companions, such that there is no unoccupied space within 5 feet of you for the sphere to move into? Does the sphere make any effort to avoid contact with walls, floors, load-bearing columns, etc.? And finally, if the sphere is always within 5 feet of you, doesn't that make it incredibly easy for a hostile party to just... shove you into it? And, by the same token, it would be incredibly easy for you to just walk past a hostile party and have the sphere float straight into them in its attempts to follow you. While you can't directly control it, no one else can either, and you can use its desire to stay close to you to manipulate its movement. Overall, I don't think the author considered the full ramifications of having such a thing follow someone around all the time.

Second, for the Star of Certainty, what is a "nonmagical" version of Contact Other Plane? Mechanically, it's clearly just a casting of the spell that works in an Antimagic Zone or similar, but what is it lorewise? What are you doing to generate that effect in a nonmagical way?

Third, for the Star of Secrets... a natural 20 is not an automatic success on skill checks in 5e. That is only an automatic success on attack rolls. The fact this applies automatically to the next Arcana check you make, rather than being something you can choose to apply to any one Arcana check, also significantly weakens this effect.

Finally, does the Corpse Star's Resurrection effect require not having used up any of its charges on Revivify effects before then? If that is the intent, I'd suggest specifying that Resurrection uses up all five charges. --Kappatechy (talk) 23:32, 16 February 2023 (MST)

Original poster here. To address your points:

• I am fully aware that the sphere of annihilation summoned by Star of Doom's is incredibly manipulable with sufficient creativity. I like encouraging my players to think outside the box with the tools they have access to. The sphere's behavior is extremely rigid: It will always maintain a spacing of 5 feet away from you: If you get shoved into it, it will back away to maintain spacing. It does not care about collateral damage dealt to the environment, or to creatures not friendly towards you. While the sphere could be exploited heavily, it is also just as likely to be a massive liability to the party if the player who has it doesn't have a good sense of spatial awareness.

The edge case of all adjacent spaces being occupied by friendly creatures is rather unlikely, due to the fact that Dungeons & Dragons takes place in a 3D space rather than a flat plane. If all 8 spaces horizontal to you are taken, there's 18 spaces above and below you the sphere can try also. If all of thosespaces are also taken, that is an edge case so specific that I think it woul be better to leave it to the DM rather than burden this page with additional text addressing it.

• Star of Certainty's effect is nonmagical purely for the mechanical effect being nonmagical has on gameplay. Writing an explanation for this I think is an exercise better left to the DM; since eldritch powers are involved, it will probably involve invoking some incomprehensible nonsense beyond mortal ken.
• The emphasis with the Star of Secrets effect is intended to be on the automatic success part rather than the natural 20 part. This will be revised.
• The Corpse Star's effect explicitly says it uses up all remaining charges. That could be 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 charges used up, depending on how many revivify uses you have spent.

I hope this addresses your concerns. Endermage77 (talk) 02:03, 17 February 2023 (MST)