Current Events > DND afficianados is it better to cast Slow on the enemy team or Haste on yours?

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's a level 5 one shot. I only have room for one spell after preparing fireball >_>

So you wanna be that mage who fireballs half the party by "accident"

1) if a party member has the 'sharpshooter' or 'great weapon master' feat, haste is better
2) if you're a sorcerer and you plan on having twinned spell, haste is better
3) otherwise, the correct answer is "hypnotic pattern instead" because it's like slow but instead of reducing their actions and granting followup saves, it removes them entirely and does not grant followup saves

slow is not worth a caster's concentration

seems like the DMG carry capacity variant rules might interfere with this a bit

Because it's not gonna happen RAW.

well, RAW it is, because the rules as written were designed for a pre-generated party containing three champion fighters and all the additional released content was not playtested much, and often not to the point of identifying a need to enable things like variant encumbrance

RAW carry capacity is strength x 15, so unless his character is one of those 8 strength monks it'll work on almost any medium target, except maybe the ones in heavy armor.

variant encumbrance imposes disadvantage on strength checks at strength x 10, and almost any DM worth his salt wouldn't grant the player freedom from disadvantage on the grapple check if he's immediately taking to the skies, even if he does get to do the rest of his turn before the enemy can make an escape attempt with the player at disadvantage

i was halfway through writing it when i realized i don't like 5e

The best possible outcome is to stop wasting your life playing DnD.

Slow is clearly better.

that

This is funny because last week was the first time i casted fireball and I DID hit half my team by accident, I wanted to hit 3 enemies, worded it to my DM that I wanted to hit just 2 because my AoE would not be able to hit 3, he says "yes you can" and I say "okay then"
he asks 3 of my party members to make the saving throw, I explain that when I casted hunger of hadar earlier I worded it so that the edge would be right besides them so it you can infer that I'm right now also trying to also not hit them and this is why I was targetting two of them on my first claim, but I let him decide that due to thsi being a very pwoerful spell and this being my first time casting it, accidents can happen.
they were obviously annoyed but I DID warn them not to get into the enclsoed space with 3 minotaurs because I was gonna AoE the shit out of the place.

due to thsi being a very pwoerful spell and this being my first time casting it, accidents can happen.

The gauntlets definitely help--both from a rules alignment and roleplay believability perspective!

@orcus_snake the solution to fireball problems is for wizards to take the alert feat. Helps in *many* ways, not only do you go first usually but you never risk the dreaded no reaction (no shield!) surprised condition.