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Cake day: June 26th, 2023

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  • I’m okay with a DM ruling that it’s possible to cast it in such a way that someone is taken off guard, sure. Maybe a performance or deception vs hostile creature(s) insight rather than the typical stealth vs perception when determining surprise from sneaking, which is not RAW, but I think sounds reasonable. I’d definitely not consider it to be an automatic aspect of the spell at any table I ran.

    And you absolutely could not avoid a fight and just walk away from the situation with plausible deniability because you “only insulted them”.





  • Ignoring the actual rules and mechanics is basically step one in almost every “isn’t this goofy” D&D anecdote.

    Not only is it not “decent damage” (even the buff it got in 5.5 just brings it from “the worst” to “poor”), it’s also not a subtle thing you can just drop on someone unsuspectingly.

    Spellcasting for an attack is an obvious aggressive action, which means an initiative roll comes first to see if you even manage to get it off before they clock you. It’s also not like everyone around just shrugs and lets you go about your business because all you did was hurl an insult. You attacked someone with an offensive spell, the response is exactly the same as if you threw a firebolt at them

    The flavor of insulting someone to death is fun, I’ll grant that, but there’s nothing special about Vicious Mockery mechanically that makes it immune to initiative order or people noticing what you’re doing.


  • You never get to court, that’s the point the previous comment is making.

    As an individual trying to stand up to them you’re somewhere between being either completely ineffectual or making the situation worse. Having the law on your side doesn’t matter because it’s impossible for you to summon the enforcement of it fast enough to help you, assuming they even would.

    A local community response that will mobilize and appear in your neighborhood in seconds is basically the only way to respond quickly with enough force for them to care about.