Spike Growth: my favourite spell this week
Spike Growth: my favourite spell this week
Spike Growth is a Level 2 Transmutation Spell. This spell allows spellcasters to transform an area of land into a hazardous spiky terrain. Creatures walking through the area have their speed halved and take Piercing damage.
Is your party outnumbered? Low on armour? Confined to a narrow passage? No worries, mate! Just roll out this camouflaged welcome mat, and let your foes take care of themselves!
Shape a piece of ground into hard spikes. A creature walking on the spikes takes 2d4 piercing damage for every 1.5 m / 5 ft it moves.
The diminutive die in that description might look laughable at first glance, but consider how large the spiked area is: 40 ft diameter, meaning 16d4 or an average of 40 damage to anything that crosses its full width. All those tetra-dice sure are pointy!
The area is wider than a typical humanoid's movement per turn, so most things without wings won't have time to do much after crossing it.
On top of that:
The spikes are difficult terrain, halving a creature's movement speed.
So, while waiting for the baddies to slog through the brambles, you can pass the time with target practice on their ranged-attack buddies.
What's that you say? Your visitors somehow made it across, and are now breathing down your neck and twice as pissed off? Perfect! Now's the time to practice your thunderwave, or favorite knock-back ability, or turn undead if the neighbours are necrotic, or just give them a good old fashioned shove, and let them enjoy your garden tour all over again.
Wait a minute! You're facing a threat of higher intelligence and refined poise, and they stopped before stepping on your grass? What a great time for your druid to yoink them out of their comfort zone with a thorn whip, or (if you earned it as a reward) try out Sorrow's similar spell.
Did your barbarian charge in before you could seed the field? Ask her to toss a body or two onto the flower bed while they're still standing. They make great compost!
In short, wizards and sorcerers might love to talk about their fireballs, but with this horticultural marvel, my bard has more fun. All natural, certified organic, and (as a level 2 spell) cheap and easy.
Happy plowing!
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I just finished the game as a druid and, like the other commenter said, the Woodland Being summon can cast it with no spell slots so I just never used it on the druid.
Not to poopoo on your great post but I found the spell to have very little use compared to other AOE spells mainly because of its size. You have to position it perfectly or else your team suffers, too. A lot of times enemies walk backwards out of it so any melee has to use a bow lest they take 20 damage getting to the enemy. Normal mode though, maybe I'll like it more during my upcoming Tactician run
Sorry that was a bit of a vent. I'm a newbie to anything dnd-related but I was kind of disappointed with my class. Wild shape felt weak, my most-used spell was Call Lightning followed by Moonbeam. Its only saving grace for me were all the summons
I found the spell to have very little use compared to other AOE spells mainly because of its size. You have to position it perfectly or else your team suffers, too.
I haven't found it unwieldy (I view its size as an advantage) but I should note that I like the tactical aspect of combat, and positioning is an important part of that.
If my martials are itching to get their hands dirty, I send them forward first, or place the spike circle slightly to one side to create a small area that they can jump over on the other side. That not only grants a bloodthirsty barb two-way passage, but carves a sort of choke point out of an open field. Since Spike Growth isn't fenced in by slopes or steps, a side shift like that sometimes has the bonus effect of overlapping high ground and denying access to sniper spots.
Sorry that was a bit of a vent. I’m a newbie to anything dnd-related but I was kind of disappointed with my class. Wild shape felt weak,
What druid circle did you choose? Wild Shape is widely considered an ability of utility, not combat, with one exception: Circle of the Moon, which has power spikes at levels 2 and 10. Outside of that, their spells are their great strength. (Which makes sense, given that they have the magic progression and capacity of full casters.)
Full disclosure: My druid experience comes from 5th edition D&D. I haven't yet played one in Baldur's Gate 3, so I suppose it's possible their kit was nerfed.
I didn't know that about wild shape and I was bummed! I was looking forward to fighting as an animal but I never found a use for it besides traveling through small spaces. I think I used Wild Shape with purpose maybe...twice the whole game?
I can't remember what circle I picked, i think Circle of the Ancient or something. I didn't walk in with a plan, I was just feeling things out as I went. Now that I've looked into it more, I'm ironically playing druid again for my tactician run...2 spore druids, a war cleric, and necro wizard. For an insane amount of summons which seems to be where druids shine in this game
Yeah, one place where this game currently falls down is expecting players to make subclass decisions without showing them the path they're committing to. I recommend keeping some D&D (5e) references (tools) on hand for this reason, at least until you get familiar with how different builds progress as they level up.
I'm glad you found a druid you like. (Related: I had a concept for a decay-and-fungus-focused druid before the Circle of Spores was introduced, so I've been wanting to try the official version ever since.) If you haven't lost interest in fighting as an animal, give the moon druid a try some time. Becoming a brown bear with an independent health pool at level 2 is awesome.
That's funny because bear form was the one I wanted. I played exclusively tanks in WoW but didn't care for druid (bear) so I was hoping bg3 would be my chance. I'll probably pick druid if I ever play a real game of DND because I like the RP aspect of it and I feel like there's more "flexibility" in a tabletop game