to sleep or to expiditously retreat?
I am trying to decide on my 2nd level 1 spell. I am thinking either sleep or expiditous retreat. Sleep would let me put up to 4 HD of creatures to sleep (so we could coup de grace them) for 2 minutes (1/per level). To give you an idea, a kobold is 1 HD; an orge is 4 HD. I can cast this in a 10ft radius up to 120 ft away (100 ft + 10 ft/level). Expitidous retreat would allow me to move 30 more feet as a part of my single movement. So I could move 50 feet and then shoot - allowing me to move around creatures and still hit them and move into spaces which are not covered by attacking allies. I am really torn. Thoughts?
posted by JskaH at 10:16 PM
6 Comments:
Sleep seems like the more effective offensive spell. But expeditious retreat is probably more versatile since movement is involved in a lot more things than just combat.
In such quandries I usually ask myself which choice is more in keeping with the character's personality, methods, strategy, backstory, etc.
Do you see Wilhelm as more of a crafty spellcaster, or as an adventurer who uses his magic to enhance his general capabilities?
Other (more nuts-and-bolts) things to consider:
Does either spell scale up as you advance in levels?
Can you cast expeditious retreat on someone else?
9:00 AM
The Dwarf and I discussed these same things. One concern was when you reach higher levels the ability to put 4HD of creatures to sleep loses some of its punch when a lot of the creatures are bigger than that. Granted it'll be a while before that becomes a concern. You can NOT cast Expeditous Retreat on anyone but yourself. Bummer. But it is about the only way to make yourself faster and jump farther and it'll work no matter what level you are. It's a tough call.
11:12 AM
I'd think that your smaller stature may make the expeditious retreat more valuable to be able to get out of melee range quickly.
On the other hand, sleep gets us one spell closer to getting all the spells used in the Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt LARP video :)
12:20 PM
I agree with both Phollower and lkmanitou. I think expiditious retreat would be better since your movement is small and it will always be useful reguardless of your level. I think sleep will only be benificial for a few levels. Scout had extra movement (distance) as a racial trait, but I never used it. I think in part I didn't use it because we were in a dungeon. It's hard to move too far too fast. I think that it would be much more useful in an open setting.
1:10 PM
Note to self: Get the Dwarf to pick expeditious retreat and then start dungeon campaign...
1:41 PM
I'd agree that expeditious retreat seems to have the longer term benefits as well as in the short term.
Sleep could also effect the non-elf/half-elf members of our party where retreat has no chance of negative effect other than you running and leaving us behind. (I don't have to run faster than the bugbear...just faster than you)
If you had a wide range of spells that you would get over time I'd say go for the sleep just to see it in action, but like the sorc your probably better off looking at things that will help now and in the future so when your higher level you don't have a lot of worthless lvl 1 spells that you don't get to use because the monsters are to high.
8:53 AM
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