About this mod
Rebalances rarely used level 1 spells to be more useful. Does not diminish spells that are already good.
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Attempt to rebalance all spells and cantrips to be more even in power.
- Rebalance - Cantrips
- Rebalance - Level 1 Spells
- Rebalance - Level 2 Spells
- Rebalance - Level 3 Spells
- Rebalance - Level 4 Spells
- Rebalance - Level 5 Spells
- Rebalance - Level 6 Spells
- Rebalance - Class Spells
- Rebalance - Feats
- Rebalance - Racials
- Rebalance - Common Effects
- Rebalance - Nerfs
Essential Series
Attempt to add missing pieces to the game.
- Essential Feats
- Essential Armor and Weapons
Overview
The goal of this mod is to improve Level 1 Spells that are rarely or never used and make them viable and potentially even competitive choices among the better spells of this rank. Spells that are considered top tier for the spell level will not be nerfed to accomplish this.
Even though I try to keep it balanced, the general power level increases to an extent. Some classes that have a very poor selection of spells will suddenly have a lot of useful spells and that indirectly increases their power, even if these spells aren't more powerful than other spells of the same level. As such you may want to use mods that increase the difficulty.
Recommendations
- Consider using mods that increase difficulty, like Tactician Plus, which allows you to adjust enemy health based on how many power-increasing mods you have
- Do not overdo buffing/camp casting (less concentration allows it, but if you overdo it you spend literal hours buffing during a playthrough)
- While enemies also benefit from the reworked spells, you will generally benefit more
- Only my Rebalance - Nerfs mod makes the player weaker
- Have fun










General Changes
There is little general changes as every spell has been treated seperately trying to improve them not just in power but also in a creative way where possible. However, many spells can be improved by merely removing their concentration requirement - adjustments were made to account for the lack of concentration.
Spells that no longer require concentration:
- Bane
- Compelled Duel (also gives advantage against target)
- Divine Favor (increased damage on upcast)
- Ensnaring Strike (no longer uses a bonus action on hit, duration reduced to 3 turns)
- Expeditious Retreat (can be cast on others, upcast can affect multiple targets, duration reduced to 6 turns)
- Heroism (targets limited to used spell slot level)
- Protection from Evil and Good (limited to 1 target)
- Searing Smite (duration reduced to 5 turns, dice size increased to 1d8 (initial damage and burn), now uses hybrid DC)
- Shield of Faith (limited to 1 target)
- Witchbolt (redesigned)
- Wrathful Smite (upcasts deal additional damage and now uses hybrid DC)
Spells that are desirable to cancel early kept their concentration as well as spells that are already very powerful (e.g. Bless). The exception is Entangle. Entagle's surface has been reduced to 5 turns from 10 and the concentration requirement was removed - this is sort of a beta test if this is desirable or rather a hindrance.


Color Spray / Sleep
I'm aware sleep isn't particularly unpopular, but this change wouldn't make much sense for only color spray.
- Both spells now have a saving throw (CON for Color Spray, WIS for Sleep)
- They both have seperate health thresholds, higher for color spray
- As example, Level 1 Sleep's threshold is 20 hit points
- Below 10 hit points, enemies always fall asleep, below 20 they have disadvantage on the saving throw, above 30 they have advantage on the saving throw and above 40 they cannot be put to sleep
- Note this is current hit points, not maximum
- This threshold scales with level and is noted accurately in the tooltip (see mod images)
- Sleep now also targets 3 small circles instead of a number of targets
Its possible I rework these spells further.


Charm Person / Animal Friendship
The Charm condition is extremely underwhelming. It only prevents the target from attacking the caster. It is quite disruptive if used by the enemy but not particularly useful for the player. For dialogue the Friends cantrip does the job much bettter.
In order to make these spells useful I have created a new AI archetype that charmed enemies must follow. The archetype makes enemies prioritize every other action (buffing, healing, debuffing) over attacking, so they will only attack if they have no other options left - simple enemies will still often attack. They still cannot attack their charmer. In addition the targets have disadvantage on attack rolls and INT WIS and CHA saving throws to make follow-up CC easier to hit.
Additionally:
- Duration lowered to 3 turns
- No saving throw
- Level 1 affects 3 targets, increasing by 1 per spell level
The spells also still work for dialogue. Animal Friendship can be used on animals up to INT 6.

Ray of Sickness
Damage reduced to 2d6 + 1d6 per level. Chains a lower level ray of sickness to a target within 9m. A level 4 ray of sickness will cause a nearby target to get hit by a level 3 ray of sickness, which causes another target to get hit by a level 2 ray of sickness and so on. Even level 1 will still cause a "level 0" ray of sickness to hit a nearby target for 1d6 poison damage.
May be overtuned (at least with twinned spell metamagic). But its fun - also poison damage is really bad.

Witchbolt
Instead of increasing damage you can now target additional enemies per spell level. Enemies stay tethered to you for 10 turns and you can add as many enemies as you want.
After casting it once you can activate the link for an action, causing damage to all enemies connected to you. The damage from activating the link is based on your character level, not the spell level. It starts at 2d6 and increases every 3 levels up to 5d6 at level 10. Note that this damage can be easily doubled by the wet condition.

Hail of Thorns
Explode radius doubled from 2 to 4. Now is an attack roll primarily and a DEX save secondary, meaning this ability will work with extra attacks. Now also causes bleeding when targets fail the DEX save. Damage unchanged.

Arms of Hadar
A somewhat underrated spell. Simply increased the radius from 3 to 4 and damage from 2d6 to 2d8. Upcasts add 1d8 instead of 1d6.

False Life
As long as the temporary hit points last all damage taken is reduced by 1-6 (based on spell level).

Cure Wounds
Now heals 1d8 + 1.5 * Spellcasting Ability Modifier. Every level adds 1d8 and 0.5 * Spellcasting Ability Modifier. The range has been increased to 3 from 1.5.

Goodberry
Berries now heal 2d4, increasing by 1d4 per level. Each level increases the summoned berry count by 1 and their supply value also increases by 1.


Longstrider / Enhanced Jump
Quality of Life: Longstrider now applies to all allies in a radius, similar to Aid. Enhanced Jump now applies to all allies around the target, given that you are not in combat.
Common Questions
If you ask these questions in the comments I'll not be answering them. You have the ability to write, so you have the ability to read as well. And hopefully the ability to think one step further than just my explanations.
Compatibility
In general:
The main reason for compatibility issues is two mods editing the same thing. Depending on the exact thing this can be very broad or narrow. You don't have to be a modder or understand these terms, just know there is different kinds of ways the game stores information:
- Root template: Has to be entirely overwritten to be changed, so two mods changing different things still aren't compatible
- Stats entry: Can be inherited, merged, changed, if the same thing is changed it'll overwrite, otherwise changes merge (unless the entry is entirely overwritten which a lot of novice modders do)
- Progressions/list entry: Like root templates, but compatibility framework allows merging changes for proper compatibility
Load Order
In general:
- The mod loaded later/further down the list overwrites
- Example: Mod A (loaded first) changes the field 'AmountOfTargets' on Firebolt to 2 and Mod B (loaded later) has it set to 1 then Firebolt will only hit 1 target
- If the mods change different fields and use self-inheritance (recommended) then the changes merge - which can be desired or not
- Example: Mod A (loaded first) changes the field 'AmountOfTargets' on Firebolt to 2 and Mod B (loaded later) changes Firebolt to deal 1d12 damage - if the mods use self-inheritance, you now get a Firebolt that hits 2 targes for 1d12
Feedback
Please try to provide feedback as 'user story'. Tell me what happened, the circumstances, what fight, what difficulty etc. - otherwise its fairly hard for me to judge whether something I designed is problematic in general or just in specific scenarios. That information is very important for me to understand the nature of the issue.
As example: "Your rebalanced blight is way too strong!" is not nearly as helpful as "Blight carried my fight against X entirely by itself, because I lured the enemy out of the room, they clumped up and every hit dealt 3-5 damage to 8+ enemies" - even though the second is still just a single sentence.
Work involved
Rebalance - Level 1 Spells took around 30h to make. Its partially because it was my first rebalance mod and I had to get into a few habits, but mainly due to the amount of spells and the scale of some of the reworks - also testing.
An additional version means probably at least 1h or 2h of making that alternate version and uploading it, and then several hours maintaining that version, as now every change made to the original mod has the be copied over to that version. Every upload takes twice the effort (packing two files, updating version, updating description, updating changelog, ensuring you are overwriting the correct file etc.).
There is a lot of unfortunately quite popular mods on nexus that are the lowest effort stat overwrites that don't care about any of: Compatibility, fixing tooltips, adding new mechanics, designing well, making anything new or properly testing - they just slap existing passives on something that already exists. Updates aren't required or don't happen. Of course they can have 10 versions of that mod, because it took them almost longer to upload that version than make it and they aren't going to maintain it.
So before you ask "Can you make a seperate version" ask yourself - what are you asking exactly? A stranger to spend multiple hours of their time for free to make a version that barely appeals to a fraction of people over the original mod and even less people that didn't download the original but would download the other version (= minimal gain in quality and popularity).
More importantly, you are asking the person to take that time away from making a new mod, something that far more people would enjoy far more (probably even you).
Now lets talk money for a second. Depending on how passionate a modder is about your request they might make it for free (since they would have done it themselves anyway) or ask a reasonable price of say 40€ (=44$) an hour. Now look at the highlighted numbers again and do the math. An alternate version is most definitely not the former (something the modder is passionate about) or it would exist already. Are you willing to pay that? A fraction of it?
That is all to say, I still appreciate constructive feedback. Many good changes and additions have come from comments. All I want is for people to stop and think for a moment what they are asking.
Syrchalis' Druid Mod Collection
- Druid Quality of Life - Huge quality of life improvements and bugfixes for druids
- Druid Perfection - Added depth, multi-classing benefits and features for druids
- Druid Wildshape Weapons Armor Gear and Items - Items that work in Wild Shape
- Wildshape Viability - New Spells, Rebalance, Icons and more - Wild Shape overhaul, dozens new spells, specialized Wild Shapes
Links
Check out my other mods.
And also my armors: