is there a way to get this combo done consistently RAW against enemies not wearing any metal? basically i'm asking how can we get hard to remove metal on any target.
Pin someone down and use the uncommon magic item immovable rod, cast heat metal. It can hold 8000 pounds and needs a DC strength of 30 to move the rod.
@@dejanbeep6293 it can actually be various ways. It could be a god, it could be power of nature, it could be an artifact ect. Clerics and druids are a bit similar cause in ad&d they were just slightly diffrient so it becomes confusing. I think worked metal would still break their divine connection since it's far as unnatural you can go. So ye, druids channels divine power
@@dejanbeep6293 no one actually reads how it works lol. Lorewise you can even take an oath pansexuality as a paladin, just your dm needs to homebrew that lol. But canon wise it is possible.
To be fair, that on a grand scale is something that works to explain "why doesn't this work?" "Oh it does, technically, but the gods don't really take kindly to it and the last time someone used it as their main strategy the gods collectively lit him up so bad that nobody tries anymore.
Tip for DMs: It takes 5 minutes to take of Plate Mail *while keeping the armor intact*, if the enemy doesn’t care, the could probably start cutting and slashing and tearing at the leather holding the armor in place and get it off way faster
you cant cut or slash a metal plate, that's the whole point of wearing one, the best you can do is cut at the straps, which, is far harder to do, because they are put in places that make it harder to do, as that's one of its few weakpoints. as a side note, this would probably not work in real life, because NOONE wears a metal armor on their skin, they use some padded cloths, because, this exact thing happens when they wear armor under the sun. so you know. its a great idea, that just wouldnt really work.
I think if the damage rolls are low, one could absolutely say that the padded cloth underneath protects them from the majority of the damage, and if the rolls are high, perhaps the armor was so hot it started to burn holes through the underlayer, or things shifted during combat and some of the red hot metal made contact with the skin in a meaningful way. I love finding ways to creatively explain the dice result rather than worry about reasoning why it shouldn't have happened, so long as the math is relatively balanced.
@@skyrhinoceros i would hate to play at your table. a roll of 2 is two damage ignoring armor. Full stop. This isnt cheating. It makes sense. stop nerfing player ingenuity.
Better thing about heat metal, it pairs with shatter. Shatter destroys unworn items, so they are forced to either take all that damage, or just lose their weapon/armor.
Grapple another party member, Monsters or NPC Bosses are usually tougher or have higher hp than players, so take a party member hostage, if the druid doesnt want to cook his buddy alive then he has to make a choice, also is the Boss alone? wtf? if that is the case then just lie down and die.. A mage henchman casts dispel, the druid flies around and not taking threats, his other party members takes all the beating, effectively reducing their pool of hit points, its not OP depends on the competence of the world villains..
This is really funny and reminds me of something I had planned for a roleplay thing I was doing with friends: a fae lord that will claim random things as payment for favors, such as stealing what would be someone's death a moment before it happens. Or for something fitting here, stealing a spell as it was cast
@@TaosoftheVoid lol I love this idea. Surely a formula for some incredibly wacky encounters. I just imagine them showing off what they've taken like The Collector, "and here we have the death of one Warblegrim Erranis" Person being shown this: "oh my that looks like it was a painful way to go!" "They're thriving"
@@laynebonham3968 This is the beauty of it. You take warcaster, dip into artificer and craft a belt of fire resistance. You are not losing concentration, you are simply an Iron Maiden from hell itself. At early levels all you need is Heroism and you are good.
Heat metal is amazing overall. I remember one time our DM had put us in a crypt whose corridors looped around, and the final boss was a metal construct monster. So our druid cast heat metal and we just ran. This turned what should have been an epic boss battle into a massive Benny Hill.
There is a reason both DnD and PF state you have to cast on metal *equipment.* Tell me, why would a metal construct actually be hurt by being heated? What flesh is there to burn? Also if you're talking 5e? Iron Golem is not only immune, but healed by fire for exactly that reason.
@@Handles-Are-A-Stupid-Idea Uh, wasn't an golem. I think my DM took the stat block of a shield guardian. As for why it would hurt, we figured it was basically melting it, warping its plating and joints and whatnot until it broke. (also 5e rules says heat metal targets a "manufactured metal object, so I guess RAW it wouldn't work since creatures aren't objects, but hey, it felt like it made sense)
That reminds me of a mechanic in Metal Gear Solid 5, dunno if happens in other games too. But in that one if you take out a lot of enemies via (for example) sniper headshot, they begin wearing helmets, so you have to change tactics over time or enemies adapt.
he doesnt even need to do that. all he need to do is know that you dont wear metal armor over your bare skin. you use some padded cloth. because, metal armor gets hot under the sun. so you know, people already countered that when designing and wearing armor.
@@kinsan89 cloth is a great insulator. and it works both ways. thngs like gamberson were still used under metal armor to avoid burns from sun heat. it all depend on how hot you can make it. also, metal is great at transfering heat, so, if anything, most of the heat will be lost to the air, as opposed to the person inside.
I had a D&D party do something similar once. They shoved a vial of acid into this guy's mouth, tilted his head back, and then smashed it. The most needlessly painful and horrifying death ever, and I had to narrate it...
@@donovan1345 yeah. Plenty of ways around heat metal. You could put a javelin or an arrow with a metal tip in em but they can be removed rather easily and aren't worth the spell slot I think.
How to be The Hug Of Death. Step 1: Play as Animated Armor Step 2: Have bard as teammate Step 3: Have the bard heat you up Step 4: Charge at enemies and hug them
As a dm who loves cyborgs and has had this happen a few times, I can relate. I ended up having the cyborgs target the casters first, using ranged weapons.
@@RichardLeslieWhereat if we start dipping into realism, I could rule as a DM that they start taking levels of exhaustion instead. Since that would make it significantly sweatier and harder to breath in heavy armor.
@@piranhaplantX if we wanna take it into realism, the platemail wearer will have layers of padding between them and the metal, mostly of leathers and cloth, making them very insulated against the heat of the metal.
@@johnathansanford8206 I think you missed my point, as I'm responding to someone who mentioned gambeson (the name for the main portion of padding) While that may, temporarily, protect you from severe burns, on the body. That does not protect you from the air around the metal, and in your helmet, from getting warmer and exhausting you. Which was already an issue for people fighting in full platemail to begin with, the added heat would make it worse. It would also get progressively warmer on the body, causing you to overheat faster. Hell, you could probably die from heatstroke within the duration of the spell. Long story short, this is why we don't quote "realism" too often when discussing D&D mechanics. 5e especially is way too simplified to account for things of this sort, without some awkward homebrew.
@@johnathansanford8206 bro. If the metal is red-hot then it don't matter about padding. You're still wearing an oven at point. Red-hot metal is hot as fuck the padding wouldn't save you from the sheer heat of it
I used Heat Metal as a paladin to break into a vault. The vault guard had gone down, but the key got bent out of shape in the process. I have the bright idea to cast Heat Metal and use my 19 strength to very carefully bend the key back into shape. The key is put in the lock and we prepare to loot when one of the players (who has actually done some blacksmithing) points out that the key should be incredibly brittle now. After a bit of back and forth, the DM splits the difference and has the key break off in the vault door, permanently forcing the lock open. Better hurry to the next area, because the next patrol that passes by will definitely notice and raise the alarm. Didn't matter to us, because we still got our loot with minimal effort :P
My wife just got this spell, and used it on crooked knights to get into a town. Another party member used a scroll with 'silent', rendering them a slow, agonizingly quiet death.
after having my players use that technique a few times (thank you Zee Bashew for the suggestion) i surprised them when their latest victim just hit a button on his shoulder and the armor just fell off (cast-away armor). sure, he lost some of his AC... but they were not prepared
yeah, this is my typical approach as a DM for several campaigns. Let them have their fun, and reward them for finding and executing a cool technique, but the world is responsive, so once word spreads, enemies will respond and find a counter strategy, such as straps that can be removed in a turn, etc etc. more importantly, it raises the stakes, and encourages the party to A) keep finding new things to keep the game fresh, and B consider not just what is fun but how the world responds to their actions(this one may be less important to some tables but for mine we love the feeling of a responsive world that makes sense).
Exactly, I was pretty sure castaway armor is a thing in 5e officially as well, as a mundane 'enchantment' to apply to armor, so while this idea is pretty good, still easily counterable after the first cheese
Next step: NPC Artificer makes self-propelled armor that latches onto the one concentrating on Heat Metal. A contested grapple to not get armored up, and restraint should they fail and drop concentration.
@@aaronwilliams8887 I wish I had a DM as cool as that. All mine did was make things resistant or immune to what we found out because they can't think of a way to stop it and it became extremely less fun when it became DM vs. Players.
This is why you wear a gambeson under the plate. No metal touches the skin, and the gambeson is a good insulator. Just run up and hug someone the Druid likes. I hear they like trees.
@@noecarrier5035 Normally linen. Every suit of plate has a gambeson or similar garment underneath. It'll smoulder after a few rounds. The thing about gambesons is that they get soaked in sweat after a while, so the spell isn't so much barbequeing the fighter as much as boiling them in their own sweat the first round or two.
OK but you don't put pizza on the heated metal in your stove, the fact that it's IN the stove is good enough to cook it. Now imagine that your suit of armor is now a stove.
"Welcome to Dungeon Master Therapy. How can I help you today?" "I made a campaign that added Transformers as an enemy race, and now all my players are using Heat Metal."
@@joshuagiehll3737 No, but they do overheat, and melt. Plus, I doubt that their internal wires, cogs, and whatever else they have under their armor doesn't necessarily handle heat as well.
2D8 is not a lot of damage and implies that it is not hot enough to melt most metals. One would think that a non-organic, mostly metal creature would largely be immune or resistant to this kind of heat attack. It’s not like fleshy things burning.
Even better idea as a DM running a high level game; Have an enemy with heal metal fight alongside an iron golem. Cast heat metal to give it free healing every single round. Then make sure the caster doesn't die.
An iron golem is a creature and not an object, so it is not itself a valid target. But if you give it "extra armour", that would be a valid target, and this also gives you a flavour reason for buffing its HP/damage/AC to make it an actual challenge for high level play. Now, imagine if he had three caster friends, and the other two gave him delayed blast fireballs to hold, one in each hand!
@@saltypork101 my forever GM proposed the twisted idea of an Iron golem with a fire mephit housed in an empty cavity of the golem. ...he's min-maxy with his combat encounters
Honestly tho, this is probably one of the more realistic ways someone would use magic in combat, as well as one of the more accurate depictions of how scary heat is irl
@Fractal Paradox oven mittens are used because they work. Its be uncomfortable, but you wouldnt be scalded, and itd take minutes for you to start baking alive good and proper.
@ijones36 Yeah, I think we are talking about different scales of heat here. Mittens work for your average baking temps (up to like 400°C, but usually around 180). Red hot steel a thousand or more degrees, in direct contact with your gambeson, would likely set it on fire, and _severely_ burn you, and even if you are able to throw yourself into a river or something and escaped burns, you'd be dealing with lots of smoke in your eyes and lungs, plus the heat, which even if isn't enough to burn you alive in seconds, would be extremely uncomfortable. Nobody would just get up and resume fighting after that.
@@satan3763 i like to think its a demon tempting him to commit funtime and knows of the chastity belt and casts heat metal on it to make him take it off so its easier to get him to commit the sin
Honestly? If an NPC lost an action and 4 or 5 points of armor class due to ripping off their armor, I'd be ok with it. My spell would still have had a massive effect on the fight. Think of it like this: imagine a spell that could give an enemy -5 AC for the rest of the fight and make them lose an action. Without a saving throw. What level would that spell be?
Ah, but they have disadvantage on ability checks, and so one could just argue that flexing to destroy the armour would be an ability check. NPCs and monsters have to make them too, after all. And it might even cost their entire action to do so.
I learned this lesson when I came up with the idea of putting diverse self-concentrating glyphs of warding onto the "surface" of my artificer's gear... Then the BBEG suddenly revivified himself off a glyph on his cloak.
Yeah, my DM tried copying my sheet once. I did actual D&D judo on him. 46 CMB anyone? I conveniently forgot to include his whole item list too, so it was really fun when his toon was tied up with what's essentially a medieval bike lock (braided iron)
That is what grappling is for. And someone with heary armor usually has a high strength as well. So while the caster may run away, if his friends are left behind the hot armor will give them a hug.
I mean theres also just....using your reaction to deck the squishy spell caster as they try to flee melee range from having to touch your armor, and having a low ass AC because they tried to use wildshape to run faster, forcing concentration to drop, but that works too lol
@@lonelywolf1784 He used a level 9 example. This isn't even that good anyway at low level, how often are your enemies going to survive the damage for long enough. 2D8 on a bonus action isn't the most insane thing in the world. Spike growth is much better.
@@Kitusser spike growth sucks for damage. Terrain denial, sure, it's alright, but it'll only do 2d4 damage damage for every 5ft they move, and even if they fail the save to notice it as hazardous they likely aren't just gonna run back and forth through your spikes.
@@Kitusser Which would equate to 16d4 damage, which is less than HALF of the maximum possible damage for Heat Metal (20d8). The advantage that Spike Growth has here is when there's multiple targets, provided you're casting it in a choke point and your enemies don't succeed on the wisdom save.
I remember I did this in a cave system with my Druid. We were chasing a BBG fighter dude, I casted it on his armor and wild shaped into a spider and hid on the ceiling like 50ft away from him. Good times
Wildshaped Druid using heat metal: "Ha ha! You're on fire!" The Hot metal Knight upon giving up on the Druid who has fled: "Come 'ere, wizard! I've a real nice hug!"
@@janschievink1586 I actually had a player in my campaign ask me if his Warforged Druid could cast heat metal on himself. . . Sadly it doesn't work since it has to be an object and while he is classed as a construct he's still a creature. Then he told me his Warforged is also female, so I had to allow it after that.
@@Noobie2k7 LOL surprise sexism. On a more serious note I was under the impression armor and weapons still counted as objects but the racial ability integrated armor prevents their removal without the wearers intent were you still using the Unearthed Arcana version?
The artificer in my party abuses the SHIT out of this spell. He's in heavy plate and can regularly get bonus AC effects, so no one can hit him to break concentration. Best incident was when we were facing a lich riding a white dragon: "so, does that saddle have metal on in?" (GM groans) "yes…" "Awesome :)"
You forget, Warforged have an 'integrated armor' ability, which requires 1 hour to don or doff armor of any kind. Which makes heat metal really friggin hurt
in my homebrew tabletop rpg, i've made one of the basic elemental spells with this exact hidden intent in mind. it's called fire hand, and covers the hand of the caster in fire for a number of turns. while the effect is active, that hand specifically is immune to heat and fire, and has all the properties and interactions of fire, it also deals a low set amount of damage on contact. it's presented and worded as a utility thing that kind of encompass the idea of an affinity with fire, being able to handle hot things, easily lighting fires, using fire as light source, and so on. but i basically did that hopping some player would make a grappling mage out of it one day.
Here's a session/combat encounter idea: the party is in a crowd, traveling through the city, when the tanks plate mail suddenly begins to burn red hot. Have them roll initiative, but the only "enemy" on the initiative table at first is the Heat Metal damage counter, where it'll deal damage in the round. What does your party do? Do they hunt down the caster? Try to dispell it? Maybe for the sake of the encounter you could say the caster needs to stay within 60 ft of their target, or maybe the caster panics as soon as they think they're noticed and run, so the party only needs to get relatively close to finding them. But no matter what they do now, the assassination attempt was clear.
"Its too much to give Druids access to Fireball! Its too powerful, give them Revivify and Plant Growth instead!" Meanwhile the druid: "That's some nice armor there that takes 5 minutes to throw off."
@@Kitusser Not really. Its a 100ft radius for no damage and its difficult terrain-like feature applies to ALL creatures that pass through it, including you and your allies. Yes you've slowed the enemies down, I hope to god you didn't do this indoors, but if you did it outdoors I also hope you were far enough away to have it matter and have decent enough ranged attacks to hit targets over that area. Not saying its bad, but an immediate 8d6 smack to the rack is applicable in many situations as provided you didnt nuke your own party using it, you just dealt a ton of damage to multiple foes and possibly just created a massive fire hazard for foes to move through (if you wanted it of course). You think difficult terrain is nasty? Imagine difficult terrain but its chipping at your health as you move through it AFTER you got dunked on by 5e's equivalent of your average real life hand grenade.
What makes this more fun is if your able to catch them in iron bands of binding first and they fail the strength save you technically trapped them in medium metal armor
Twinned Spell wouldn’t work, but not for the above reason. The rules state that the effects of the same spell cast twice don’t combine, the example given being two castings of a Bless spell doesn’t give a 2d4 bonus. But Heat Metal affects an object and causes damage to something touching it and the damage is on the caster’s turn. Twinned Spell specifically states that it is used with spells that target creatures, and a metal object is not a creature (though possibly an exception for constructs made of metal). If Heat Metal was casted twice on the same object, it wouldn’t deal double damage, but if it was casted on, say, a shield and a suit of armor by two separate mages, there’s no reason it wouldn’t deal double the damage since the target is two separate objects and the damage occurs on two different turns. I don’t see any reason casting it like this would fall under the category of same spell effects, because this spell operates similarly to Spiritual Weapon and I can’t imagine anyone saying that someone can only take damage from one Spiritual Weapon per turn even if they get hit by two in a single turn. But, again, Twinned Spell wouldn’t work since it allows you to target two creatures, and metal objects aren’t creatures
@@thetruezoneinyou can, but not on the same creature, thats why heat metal works, because it targets a piece of metal, and a creature can be wearing more than one piece of metal.
I won a PvP session as a bard with Heat Metal and run. I also once stood inside a stone pillar and the five seconds of “oh shit” in my DM’s eyes as he tried to work out how he was going to get me to come back out again rather than just waiting for the other players to pick each other off was golden.
@@ryynerwicked2762 They were both one-shot pvp sessions where the aim was to win against your fellow players, I would not do this in a normal campaign. My DM used to run them when too few people could make our regular sessions because they didn’t take too much prep time on his end and several of the players (including me) were very new to the game, so it gave us a chance to get more familiar with combat and other classes/races/features.
two more details about this spell that I love: One, you cannot quench it so even the person wearing the plate armor of toastiness jumps into a lake, it doesn't stop. Now they have to worry about drowning. Two, it says a piece of metal, so if some mage decides to flex in their shiney metal tower..... Yeah... circumstantially an evil spell.
If I had a Druid player use Heat Metal on an armored foe I'd make sure to include more of them in future sessions. Especially if they're a non-Moon subclass that needs to make good use of their spells. Giving each party member opportunities to get use out of their niche abilities against specific targets makes the game more fun. High AC means harder for the martials to fight, so the magic user having the right tool to handle them is good for teamwork. No idea when this will get off the ground, but planning a campaign for new players to D&D and/or just new to 5E, and one is planning to play a Stars Druid, so I hope I can be blessed with the problem of dealing with Heat Metal.
You really don't have to. If you give the creature an extra 30 hp, you have nullified the heat metal damage. So if you really want to go against the player, you just have to bump up the HP of the monsters. More importantly if they run away, that is actually a bonus to the monsters as they now have one less PC to absorb their damage.
This wouldn't actually work the way people think. Out of combat it's essentially as everyone believes. But the number of times you can realistically do that is very small given the amount of time it takes and other factors. In any sense of reality, the DM can simply say "ok, but they aren't directly touching the metal so they take no damage outside of "condition" ". This is because metal armor almost NEVER directly touches the skin, it's padded with cloth and leather for comfort and to help it stay in place. That stuff will stave the heat for at least a round or 2 before I'll give and say they take the damage from the transfer of heat. That's at least the way I'd go if I had a player try to use the spell like this. But let's say you don't do that and just take the full damage. How long does any particular non-boss encounter usually last? Maybe 3-5 rounds depending on encounter. And they are guaranteed a chance to do something before you move again (unless something happens), so you might not always get the chance to escape. And if the DM is smart they'll have at least 1 ranged opponent in case you try flying. Really it's impractical and takes way too long to kill someone. Way better to just accept their AC/turn loss with some damage or disarm literally anyone holding metal than trying to burn them and wait.
@@Inaktha I would disagree. The spell description itself says you can choose heavy or medium metal armor. Therefore while historically there was padding, that doesn't exactly exist in D&D. And if it did, the spell still says you can target heavy or medium armor, so any padding is clearly except from saving you from the damage. The spell would work exactly as most people think, because the spell itself says that it does. Granted, the game doesn't assume you are going to cast it, turn into a fast animal and run away. Granted, only a moon druid can get away with it. All other druids need to survive a round before they can retreat. More realistically, in game, the druid might be able to retreat, but the rest of the party probably cannot. So, eventually the party is going to go after the druid if they survive anyway.
There's actually a Common magical item that can counter Heat Metal: The humble Cast-Off Armor. A bit pricey at low levels... but hey, so's plate too, right?
For any DMs that have this done to them, remember that the 5min. Doffing of plate armor or any doffing, is the time it takes to take the armor for re-use. You could take an action and cut the straps holding the armor together, just remember to lower the AC of the creature in that case as they can't use it without some repairs at that point
@@LastnameIchose alright, so maybe 3 or 4 rounds then, because it's a process of cutting a few pieces of leather strap, which would also be weakened by the heated metal
Even easier method. Heat metal just doesn’t work like that because what fucking psycho is just wearing the plate on their bare skin?!?! Congrats, the plate armour is hot now and the target will start sweating like crazy because of their gambeson
@@maximumforce8275 From the players perspective that's power tripping. Instead have the roasting knight beg for his life. Go into great detail about how he screams and the horror the player is inflicting. Return the trauma back to the players. Have any other intelligent creatures watching back down, flee, or also beg to stop the spell if they all surrender. Because who wants to be slowly cooked to death? Remember, your encounters do not have to be generic bad guys being bloodbags. One of my favorite scenarios are the starving bandits. Players kill any one of them and the 'smaller, younger'/'bigger older' bandit rips off his hood and yells 'DAD!'/'SON!' and the bandits give up because they were all family/villagers. If the party wipes them the village they head to is missing a lot of people for some reason.
@@Greekphire I mean, as long as they discuss it with the group about how heat metal is OP so they're adding saving throws to it, it works You idea is cool, though
If you have the Transmuted Spell Metamagic option, you could overcome otherwise fairly common resistances. (For 1 sorcery point, you can change any damage type of a damage spell that is covered by chromatic orb into another that is also covered by chromatic orb). That, and it can become a much more brutal spell than it already is. For example, forcing armor to suddenly surge in electricity or suddenly secrete acid sounds much worse than being cooked with heat. Maybe even turn your opponent into a walking loud speaker with thunder damage to blow their mind metaphorically and VERY literally? Who knows? Your alignment is always thrown into question when you pick up this spell and use it on armor.
