Can a clockwork soul sorcerer combine restore balance and heightened spell?

So, the above is a merging of 2 abilities that affect whether a creature has advantage or disadvantage on a saving throw. Let’s start by getting the specifics of each ability:

Heightened spell: Heightened spell is a form of meta magic that can be applied to a spell to incur disadvantage on a saving throw against the spell cast. The rules state:

“When you cast a spell that forces a creature to make a saving throw to resist its effects, you can spend 3 sorcery points to give one target of the spell disadvantage on its first saving throw made against the spell.”

Player’s Handbook

Restore balance: This is an ability specific to the Clockwork Soul sorcerer that allows them to cause rolls made with advantage or disadvantage to prevent advantage or disadvantage for that roll. The rules state:

“Starting at 1st level, your connection to the plane of absolute order allows you to equalize chaotic moments. When a creature you can see within 60 feet of you is about to roll a d20 with advantage or disadvantage, you can use your reaction to prevent the roll from being affected by advantage and disadvantage.”

Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything

The potential use case for combining these abilities is if you cast a spell on a creature with advantage on a saving throw, using heightened spell on its own would simply neutralise the creature’s advantage rather than imposing disadvantage. The question here is, could you instead use restore balance to first nullify the creature’s advantage and then apply the effects of heightened spell to impose disadvantage on the saving throw against the spell?

My answer on this would be no.

The reason for this is that when you heighten a spell, you do so as part of the same action that casts that spell. This means that the saving throw advantage has already been nullified and the enemy was never going to roll with advantage in the first place (note the wording is if they were going to roll with advantage, not, if they would typically roll with advantage on these types of saving throws). As you can’t make a reaction between casting the spell and heightening it (as they’re part of the same action) then you can’t combine these 2 abilities to impose disadvantage on your target.

As always, follow your DM’s ruling, but this is how I’d interpret the rules here.

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Published by Ben Lawrance

Ben is an experienced dungeon master and player who's been immersed in the D&D universe since he was a teenager over 20 years ago. Ben is the creator of Dungeon Mister and when he's not writing about D&D, Ben loves creating fiendish puzzles and devious dungeons for his players. He's an especially big fan of the Ravenloft and Dragonlance settings.

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