Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Is Grasping Vine utterly useless?

All the spell does is summon a vine that can pull an enemy towards itself once per turn. On paper it's good for pulling a potentially dangerous melee enemy away from your caster or teammate.

But in practice it's rarely worth that, considering that it's a level 4 spell. If you're a Druid there are already cheaper spells you can use to push enemies away, like Thunderwave or Gust of Wind, and save that Level 4 spell slot for something else infinitely more useful like Ice Storm, Polymorph and more.

It also doesn't help that the vine itself is immobile and only has 6hp, which means it almost always dies in one turn. Heck, even if the enemy AI ignores the vine somehow, it usually still dies just from catching a stray AOE.

Not to mention Grasping Vine requires concentration for some reason, even though every other summon spell I know of does not.

As for suggestions on how the spell could be improved:
- the most glaring issue is obviously the vine's tiny HP. Given that a druid with a level 4 spell slot can a summon a Dryad with 22hp (who can summon her own summon on top of that), I feel that the Vine, given that it's an immobile summon that requires concentration, should have 50hp at least.
- Some ppl on the internet have suggested that Grasping Vine be used to pull enemies into dangerous terrains (i.e. fire, poison clouds) and lingering AOEs like Guardian of Faith and Hunger of Hadar. Even if we were to assume that the vine didn't just die right away like it normally does, there would still be the issue that you couldn't really control where the enemy got pulled towards, as the vine can only pull a creature to itself. My suggestion is to make it possible to choose where to pull enemy to with Vine, like how you would do a Throw but in the opposite direction.

All that being said, it is possible that there are more creative players than me who have found real viable ways to use Grasping Vine, in which case please do enlighten me. Feel free to leave other suggestions on how you might improve the spell.

I agree the implementation of this spell is lazy.
Its like no one looked at this spell. No one tested it.
I completely agree with you.
I have suggestions with this spell but I will keep it to myself.
Instead I will try to be polite and tell this.
The developers hou maked this spell should do a little bit more effort and redo his/her work. The spell work way more better in 5e. Because it don't have hp.

Tbf to the devs, i imagine they didnt have time to playtest all possible spell combinations since there are so many possible builds (i mean, given all the Act 3 cut contents and someone rushed endings, the game was prolly rushed out to meet deadline).
Besides this isn't the only spell that has this issue. Arguably spells like True Strike are even more useless.
But yea, sincerely hoping that someone from a dev team notices this thread because while Vine is only one of many Druidic spells, it feels too integral to the roleplay aspect of playing a Druid.

For true strike I find use.
With Eldritch knight. There is a boots that can give 8 temporary hp if I cast concentration spell. And as an EK after cantrip you can attack with advantage. It's makes the EK litteraly immortal with a specific Halberd.
Also I find acid splash is an S tier spell. Specifically on EK because after hitting the tatget I can cast spells with advantage. And on the top of that it's the ultimate healing spell 100+ healing with one cast.