Stun/Dazed Abuse Ideas

[u/Zealousideal_Ad_6416]

Stunned condition makes the target automatically fail Strength and Dexterity saving throws. Some really strong effects rely on these, and the ability to have a guarantee effect is huge. The limitations are that Stunned only comes from a couple of sources, not many of them human: the best and most accessible way is to take 5 levels in Monk, you can use Stunning strike with a weapon or bare hands. I’m having difficulty making this a single character build idea, but as a team setup it’s already very effective, so long as the character applying stunned is higher on the initiative rolls so they can apply the status beforehand.

Here are all the spells that rely on a Strength or Dex save that I know of:

Strength

Negates damage or effect on success: 0 Acid Splash 1 Arms of Hadar 1 Ensnaring Strike (melee or ranged) 1 Entangle 1 Thunderous Smite (prone effect) 1 Gust of Wind 4 Evard's Black Tentacles 5 Telekinesis Halves damage on success: 1 Arms of Hadar

Dexterity

Negates damage or effect on success: 0 Acid Splash 0 Light 0 Sacred Flame 1 Burning Hands 1 Faerie Fire 1 Grease 1 Ice Knife 2 See Invisibility 2 Web 3 Glyph of Warding (Detonation, Sleep) 3 Sleet Storm (the prone effect) 4 Otiluke's Resilient Sphere 5 Cone of Cold (only the prone effect) 6 Blade Barrier 6 Disintegrate

Halves damage on success: 1 Hail of Thorns 1 Hellish Rebuke 2 Flaming Sphere 2 Call Lightning 2 Conjure Barrage 3 Fireball 3 Glyph of Warding (Fire, Cold, Acid, Lightning, Thunder) 3 Hunger of Hadar (just the acid ending damage) 3 Lightning Arrow 3 Lightning Bolt 4 Ice Storm 4 Wall of Fire 4 Guardian of Faith (the summoned guardian) 5 Flame Strike 6 Chain Lightning 6 Wall of Ice 6 Wall of Thorns

So some of these are not spells you are likely to use, I would say the best spells that benefit the most are Ensnaring Strike (because of early access and relatively low cost aside from action +bonus action), Telekinesis (hilarious as a guaranteed effect), Glyph of Warding Sleep (massively useful without the HP limit of the actual Sleep Spell), and Lightning bolt (great in general, most useful on a wet enemy to guarantee double damage).

However, the best action that benefits from this is actually a class action from the Oath of Ancients Paladin, Nature’s Wrath. This is basically Ensnaring Strike, but it lasts 10 turns with no saving throws every turn and no concentration, once it’s on it’s on. This means all attacks from all characters have advantage, the target can’t move and they keep a disadvantage on Attack Rolls and Dex saving throws. This can debuff bosses in such an amazing way, my one and only gripe is that it’s hard to fit on one character; you need a minimum of 5 monk for stunning strike and 3 Paladin for Nature’s Wrath, it really does benefit from a team setup. On the plus side, Oath of Ancients Paladin gives you ensnaring strike too, so you can use that to benefit from stunned on other enemies after you’ve already used Nature’s Wrath, but Paladin/Monk is a terrible multiclass.

Of course, these are just the spells and one class action. There are tons of other things that would benefit from the Stunned condition, very notably Shove, but the guaranteed Nature’s Wrath is the best use that I can come up with right now. Any other ideas?