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Teleportation spells inDungeons & Dragonshave no shortage of versatility. Going back to the genre’s roots in wargaming, the ability to control positioning, lines of sight and formations has a lot of strategic use. Scatter is unusual in that you’re able to use it for multiple goals at the same time.
While a sixth-level slot is a tall asking price, a well-placed scatter spell can chop a difficult fight into two easy fights. Spellcasters that enjoy controlling the battlefield can make expert use of this in a way that isn’t allowed by dimension door, misty step or any of the competing spells.
What Does The Scatter Spell Do?
The spell is rather simple in its description, but gains added nuance as you examine it in greater detail.
Unlikemost other teleportation spells,the targets can be within 30 feet of your caster instead of touch range. That can often be a limiting factor to spells like dimension door or arcane gate, which need the players to group up tight clusters that can easily be struck with area attacks.
Unlike other teleport spells,scatter explicitly cannot be used to deal direct damage. you’re able to’t teleport people into the air to drop them, dunk them in lava or reappear them inside solid rock. The destination must be in your line of sight with the ground or floor beneath it.
Some Dungeon Masters might interpret the targeting rules in different ways. Here are a few rules points to run by your DM:
Using The Scatter Spell As A Player
There are a lot of creative uses for a spell that can teleport groups and choose different directions for each recipient.
Synergy
Teleporting Into Damage
you may’t teleport people into lava, spike pits or drops, but you can stillplace people in situations where they’ll be forced to take damage after appearing. A pressure plate you know will trigger a damaging trap is still stable ground, as is a rooftop they’ll need to jump down from to rejoin the fight.
Scatter pairs well with persistent spells that impact an area.Force cage notably only prevents teleportation from leaving the spell, so you can use scatter to bounce people into it.
Teleporting Into Position
Every member of your party is going to have a preferred position in a fight, but often you’ll start grouped up because you’ve just entered the room, or you were all huddled around an NPC or point of interest.
Scatter lets you simultaneouslyget your rangerto high ground for shooting, your rogue out of line of sight and your fighter to cut off retreat.
Breaking Up Formations
Enemies have their own preferred positions, and often they benefit from being able to stand where they want to be before combat starts. Scatter lets you pull the enemy archers down from the rafters and theirwizard out of cover.
Mage slayers, sentinels and polearm masterscan leverage these bonuses further.
Splitting A Fight in two
One of the strongest uses of this spell is fordivide-and-conquer strategies. Targeting the majority of a pack of beasts and teleporting them the maximum distance ensures that you’ll have a round or two to defeat the remainder before they can rejoin the fight.
Wall spells that can prevent enemies from rejoining the fightare effective.
As long as you limit yourself to five targetsyou can do multiple of these things at once. You can teleport one enemy onto a pressure plate and your rogue into a convenient shadow during the distraction.
Using The Scatter Spell As A DM
Some special uses for scatter only work properly in the hands of the one running the game. The fittingly named spell is great for breaking up a party that are a bit too repetitive about using the same strategies.
Details
Split The Party
A glyph of warding with a scatter spell in it cancause the party entering a dungeon to all be teleported to different starting locations.Depending on how you rule the spell’s use, the line of sight at the time of casting might be more important than the line of sight when the glyph is activated. That means you’re able to have the scatter spell teleport players through walls or other obstacles that it isn’t allowed to do in the players' hands.
Chase Scenes
When the villains are fleeing the party, and you desperately need at least one to escape for the plot to continue, you canuse a scatter spell to split them all up running in different directionswith a teleported head start. The players can still catch up with their own teleport spells or fast moving abilities but will struggle to grab everyone.
Countering Player Strategies
A table that always stays within ten feet of their paladin’s aura can be rightly shaken up by the occasionally teleporting them out of formation. Don’t do this often enough for the players to feel punished for their playstyle, but ratherplay this trick on them once so they consider more strategiesthan the ones they know will work.
