D&D: Why Everyone’s Talking About ‘Strixhaven’ New & Confusing Spell– Silvery Barbs
One spell in the new Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos has everyone talking– mostly trying to figure out if it’s broken or not.
Now that Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos is here, the doors to the multiverse’s newest arcane university are open. And folks are talking about one of the five new magic spells introduced in the book.
Silvery Barbs has everyone talking, alright. For the most part, they’re trying to figure out if it’s busted, good, or doesn’t work the way you think you did.
What is Silvery Barbs?
Silvery Barbs is the new spell for Silverquill College. That’s the school for goths who were too rich to shop at Hot Topic and instead got everything from a custom boutique somewhere in the East Village.
Anyway, Silvery Barbs, like the Silverquill students, has stirred up no small amount of controversy. Players and DMs are trying to suss out the effects of the spell.
Why is it so confusing? Well it all comes down to some vagueness in the order you process the spell’s text.
Circumstantial Spells
First up, the spell is a reaction spell. You can only cast it under certain circumstances, but they’re fairly broad:
Casting Time: 1 reaction, which you take when a creature you can see within 60 feet of yourself succeeds on an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw.
That last part “succeeds on…” is super important. It feeds into the confusion when you combine it with the effects of the spell, which are as follows:
You magically distract the triggering creature and turn its momentary uncertainty into encouragement for another creature. The triggering creature must reroll the d20 and use the lower roll.
You can then choose a different creature you can see within range (you can choose yourself). The chosen creature has advantage on the next attack roll, ability check, or saving throw it makes within 1 minute. A creature can only be empowered by one use of this spell at a time.
In a nutshell, you can use Silvery Barbs like a better Vicious Mockery. Except for the fact that it forces the creature to reroll “the d20.”
For something like “an attack that hit” it’s pretty clear, you make them reroll and take the lower roll. It doesn’t exactly give them Disadvantage™, so a Rogue can technically still sneak attack. But it gives them the effect of it in essence.
But part of the confusion starts when players see how the spell interacts if you do have Advantage or Disadvantage.
Which d20 is “the d20” to be rerolled here? Is it one of the two dice you roll? Is it the one you decide on?
This is similar to the Lucky feat dilemma, outlined in previous errata. There, it’s explained that you can either roll 3d20 and pick which to use OR you get to pick between the best/worst of 2d20 and whatever you roll for your “Lucky” d20 roll.
In Silvery Barbs‘ case, it feels like the latter would be the correct order of operations. Roll the highest or lowest of 2d20, then reroll that result and take the lowest. Which is pretty powerful because it means you’ll always be at a disadvantage.
Mathematics wise, this works out to about a -5 on average to whatever roll you are effecting with the spell. This means that Silvery Barbs is about as effective as Shield in terms of raw defense. Except it’s actually better because it can negate a critical hit, which Shield cannot.
It can also be used offensively to impose a penalty to a creature’s saving throw. Which brings us to the next bit of confusing rules interactions: what happens if a creature has Legendary Resistance?
Legendary Resistance states:
If the [creature] fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.
What does that mean for Silvery Barbs? Because you failed on the roll but succeeded on the save. Does that mean the creature with Legendary Resistance suddenly fails again? Must they spend a second use of Legendary Resistance to succeed on the saving throw?
Or does it not matter? This being BoLS, we took the question to 40K Tournament players. These folks are some of the world’s finest at interpreting vague rules interactions upon which a whole game could hinge. Here’s what they said:
“Silvery Barbs makes you reroll and take the lower result, but that doesn’t matter because the number you roll has no bearing on whether you succeed or fail. You only spend legendary resistance once.”
We leave the question to you. But either way you spin it, Silvery Barbs is a clear frontrunner in Strixhaven.
Happy Adventuring!
