Is spellcasting in the new edition going to be significantly less interesting? [Archive] (2024)

Giant in the Playground Forums > Gaming > Roleplaying Games > > Is spellcasting in the new edition going to be significantly less interesting?

PDA

View Full Version : Is spellcasting in the new edition going to be significantly less interesting?

Pages :[1]2

(Un)Inspired

2024-07-11, 06:54 PM

I dont mean the question rhetorically. Looking through the previews that have been released, it looks like transformation spells are weaker, summoning spells have reduced functional variety, more spells require concentration, and class features have dropped some interesting multiclass spellcasting combos (au revoir Action Surge spells) that used to exist.

In exchange Jermemy Crawford has emphasized that spells can now heal more hit point and deal more damage.

Am I alone in thinking that healing and blasting are the most boring parts of spellcasting?

I dont mean to be a tremendous sourpuss, but Im getting the feeling that 5.5 is a poor fit for players that that like magic that isnt just hit point stuff.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-11, 07:41 PM

In other words, they have nerfed some of the most problematic spells, and you don't like that?

It's not like the spells are gone, you can still summon things, I am sure Polymorph will still be there, just not as strong as before. You are just no longer going to solve an encounter with a conjure animals. On the flip side, the damage and healing spells when tended to be the weakest got buffs to be more effective.

Overall that sounds like a nice balance improvement. But the proof will be in the particulars of the spells.

I still have little doubt I am going to have gripes about the weakness of upcasting.

Skrum

2024-07-11, 08:24 PM

I agree with Vryth, I think the game would improve with certain spells getting hit with the nerf bat. Summoning spells are probably the biggest offender in terms of class balance, so if the summoning/conjuring line of spells are getting reigned in, I'm for that.

Polymorph...yeah I just hate this spell. It's crazily OP, in turns any serious situation into a joke; I honestly can't think of single positive quality of it. If it's kept in the game at all, I'd like to be reconsidered. 3e's Baleful Polymorph is a potential template, though even that doesn't fix the joke problem.

I have further issue with t3+ gameplay being almost entirely about spells, but honestly, there's no level of nerfing that could be done to fix that. Sure, certain problematic spells could be fixed, but the real problem is martial classes don't scale properly.

In general 5.5e seems to be "steps in the right direction, but not enough." Disappointing, but I'll take steps in the right direction over no changes.

Psyren

2024-07-11, 08:37 PM

Judging by all the hints being dropped by the content creators under NDA, I'm expecting a big shakeup to spellcasting, namely
the removal of the "Bonus Action spell means you can only cast a one-action cantrip" rule.

That restriction is already baked into Quicken Spell, and they also removed Action Surge doublecasting by removing the Magic Action from the list of allowed surge actions.

If I'm right, it'll be another big idea that 5.24 took away from BG3.

JonBeowulf

2024-07-11, 10:11 PM

Obviously JC is putting the best spin possible on things so we need to be wary about jumping in all "OMG this is gonna be great!!!!1"

A lot's changed and we really won't know what's good and what's trash until we've had a few months to play with it among ourselves. Promises of "more spells" and "better balance" are empty until we see it in action. It sounds like they fixed the broken subclasses (but ranger still kinda bites) and perhaps they laid the foundation for something that can work. We'll see it when we see it.

(And, darn it, I wasn't even going to buy this edition!)

Schwann145

2024-07-12, 01:36 AM

Simple answer? Yes.

A lot of the people responsible for 4e design are also responsible for 5e design, and the longer 5e goes on, the more of 4e is noticeable in the game.

Spells have been getting "less interesting" for decades, and every update to the game drives them further and further toward being just another weapon, the way they were in 4e.

Meanwhile, spellcasters are tougher than they've ever been before and spell failure is actually hard to come by, compared to earlier editions.
I don't miss a lot of the mechanics of 2nd ed AD&D, but I do miss the design philosophy. I want my ttrpg to be more like a ttrpg, and less like a game of table-top Gauntlet Legends.
But I'm not the target audience anymore.

LudicSavant

2024-07-12, 02:03 AM

Am I alone in thinking that healing and blasting are the most boring parts of spellcasting? You are not alone.

JellyPooga

2024-07-12, 02:43 AM

D&D spellcasting has never been very interesting and even in its heyday (IMO 2nd ed AD&D) it still lacked the tangible consequences required to make it either engaging as a system or fit the vision of magic as a dangerous, but powerful tool.

That's my four tenets of magic and d&d fails on every front. People wonder why spellcasters are so much more powerful than martial characters or why it's so hard to balance, but this, right here, is why; the devs decided to turn magic, something that is supposed to be mysterious, powerful and full of pitfalls for the uninitiated into something commonplace. They made it boring.

To look outside of d&d, GURPS makes magic cost fatigue; cast too many spells and you start to death spiral. Fighting Fantasy goes a step further and makes magic cost you Stamina, its equivalent to d&d HP; cast too many spells and you die. Advanced Heroquest (the GW boardgame) made casting a single spell cost as much as hiring a trained henchman for a whole dungeon delve. Earthdawn has ubiquitous magic of several types, requiring characters to be dedicated toward it (at the cost of other foci), and/or bodily sacrifice. Most systems require a roll just to cast a spell, let alone adjudicate its effects.

D&D does magic really badly out of the gate, before even looking at individual spells or effects.

Mastikator

2024-07-12, 03:43 AM

Is there going to be less cheese and abuse? I don't know, they removed some but they probably and unwittingly added new exploitable options with the potential to destroy encounters, campaigns and tables.

But those are not the interesting spells IMO, the interesting spells are the CC spells and utility spells. Wall of Stone, Speak with Dead. AFAIK those are still there and still doing their thing.

A point worth mentioning is that paladin's smites did get more interesting. Using divine smite from 2014 feels impactful, especially when when do it multiple times on a turn, but if blasting isn't interesting then this shouldn't be interesting either. In the 2024 version paladin's smites are all spells and you have more options: different rider effects vs pure damage. Riders are CC, IMO wrathful smite is more interesting than just more damage.

JonBeowulf

2024-07-12, 06:28 AM

Dead things don't require CC. Riders may be more interesting and fun, but they are less effective at ending a fight**. More damage is boring but it's the quickest way to end a fight which means it's better at keeping your friends alive.

**Edge cases exist.

lall

2024-07-12, 06:29 AM

I think Wish will be interesting. Im at least interested in its edits.

Mastikator

2024-07-12, 07:03 AM

**Edge cases exist.

Is the topic of this thread "will spellcasting be less interesting" or "will spellcasting less effective at ending a fight"? I feel like those are different things and I feel like you're saying "Mastikator you're right that it's more interesting, but it doesn't help me score killing blows on zombies and I don't like that". Have I read you right or have I walked over thin ice and crashed into the freezing water?

KorvinStarmast

2024-07-12, 08:48 AM

- Magic should not be reliable, yet d&d makes in the most reliable (more reliable than swinging a sword).
- Magic should be rare, yet d&d hands it out like candy.
- Magic should be dangerous, but the caster is always safe.
- Magic should be costly, yet it is functionally free after an initial investment.
You obviously did not play the original game, nor AD&D 1e. As you went up in level and the Monsters went up in Hit Dice, the saving throws needed to negate a spell's effects decreased. You really did need those wands.

If you refer to WotCD&D, OK, fair enough assessment.

The idea that the spell caster regulates the power of the spell, rather than the magic itself doing that, is the substantive difference.

Theodoxus

2024-07-12, 09:03 AM

(And, darn it, I wasn't even going to buy this edition!)

Me either, and then this morning I logged into DDB and bought the digital package... I like the monk changes though, and can't wait to update my Tabaxi Monk, Grey Light of Dawn, with the new hotness... If I ever get to actually play them again is a different question.

ETA:
To look outside of d&d, GURPS makes magic cost fatigue; cast too many spells and you start to death spiral. Fighting Fantasy goes a step further and makes magic cost you Stamina, its equivalent to d&d HP; cast too many spells and you die. Advanced Heroquest (the GW boardgame) made casting a single spell cost as much as hiring a trained henchman for a whole dungeon delve. Earthdawn has ubiquitous magic of several types, requiring characters to be dedicated toward it (at the cost of other foci), and/or bodily sacrifice. Most systems require a roll just to cast a spell, let alone adjudicate its effects.

D&D does magic really badly out of the gate, before even looking at individual spells or effects.

Now, I might be off my rocker, but does D&D not have vastly more players than those games? I haven't seen anyone actually push GURPs at the local level since the turn of the century... So, if everyone is playing the game with the 'easy mode' spells, maybe that means something?

Not saying it's necessarily the best way - heck, it might just be that everything else about D&D is amazing and people are just 'meh' about the spell system, but going along with it because that's what is available in system... but I kinda doubt it.

We're in a cRPG era. Computer gaming has been around longer than most TTRPG players have been alive. Most grew up on FPS, MMORPGs, DTDs, MOABs, etc. Very rarely does a computer game not have auto hit, especially for spells, where at worst, you'll miss if you're not actually hovering over, or clicking on, your opponent. That mentality has saturated the TT gamer too. Any time I touched how spells worked within my homebrew, it got the most negative feedback. People like their Fire and Forget spells. There's a reason the Nuclear Wizard is quite popular - especially in BG3. Never miss MM that's boosted on the baseline to blow through all the competition?

Arkhios

2024-07-12, 09:27 AM

Ngh... "new edition" *grumble, grumble*

Ok, let's not go there now... phew!

Honestly, I feel it's a bit harsh to assume this based on just a sneak preview on a handful of spells and by not getting whole lot of actual details on those either. As has been said, there'll be a whopping over 400 spells in the book. If those are not enough to satisfy the itch, I don't know what to say. But, before we see them, I honestly think it's too early to say anything.

Darth Credence

2024-07-12, 09:48 AM

D&D does magic really badly out of the gate, before even looking at individual spells or effects.

My one tenet of magic is: Magic should be fun.

As far as I'm concerned, D&D nailed that in AD&D and 2e, and came fairly close in 5e. The biggest complaint I have about magic in 5e is the free bonus spells wizards get when they level up - that rule breaks the ability of the DM to control what magic is available in the game. The amount of magic available should be controllable by the DM so that if there is too much they can reduce it. But I would much rather that there be too much magic in the game that I have to throttle rather than too little, making it so that I either need to create new stuff or simply not have as much fun with magic.

JonBeowulf

2024-07-12, 10:17 AM

I think we were agreeing and I was just adding some context that more damage by itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Handing out the Dead condition is the best kind of CC but it's certainly the least interesting. Heck, everyone can do it.

For the OP, we're gonna have to wait and see it in action. I suspect it's not going to play much differently than it does now since everyone/thing got tweaked.

Rafaelfras

2024-07-12, 10:51 AM

I myself like blasting and healing very much, specially blasting as evoker is my favorite wizard. That said, we are not losing any interesting ability, they are just not as powerful as before.
Polymorph still does exactly what it did, but it don't give you huge HP boost.
The summons are also there but worked out to not be a burden.

Psyren

2024-07-12, 11:15 AM

But those are not the interesting spells IMO, the interesting spells are the CC spells and utility spells. Wall of Stone, Speak with Dead. AFAIK those are still there and still doing their thing.

They promised that every 2014 PHB spell made it, albeit some having big changes like the Conjure line.

Right, and if all you want is raw damage Searing has you covered with its double-scaling. It has a less reliable damage type than vanilla smite, but at the end of the day fewer monsters resist fire than don't.

D&D does magic really badly out of the gate, before even looking at individual spells or effects.

These sound an awful lot like your own personal preferences for how you think TTRPG magic should work, rather than failings or magic being "done really badly" for everyone else.

I think Wish will be interesting. Im at least interested in its edits.

I'm VERY curious about this, because more safe uses definitely increases its power.

Theodoxus

2024-07-12, 11:23 AM

I myself like blasting and healing very much, specially blasting as evoker is my favorite wizard. That said, we are not losing any interesting ability, they are just not as powerful as before.

I'm a little iffy on evoker, if only because I can't stand behind my frontliners and spam Burning Hands with scult spell until 6th, and I'll be dropping fireballs instead anyway (I'm less miffed about not being able to do it at 5th).

I still think Sorcerer should have just been re-created as the psion. There's really no need to have two similar classes using the same resource system and spell lists. Innate manifestation of magic has always classically been the realm of psionics - it was the 3rd ed Sorcerer that moved away from Vancian casting, and then WotC just pushed Wizard into the same space anyway...

Pex

2024-07-12, 11:46 AM

Magic should not be reliable, yet d&d makes in the most reliable (more reliable than swinging a sword).

It is not reliable. Monsters make their saving throws. I could miss on an attack roll.

Magic should be rare, yet d&d hands it out like candy.

The DM can make magic rare for the NPCs and monsters all he wants, but if the game says I can play a spellcaster then I will play a spellcaster because I want to and the game said I could. If you don't want magic play a game that doesn't have magic.

Magic should be dangerous, but the caster is always safe.

Players should not be punished for doing what the game says they can do. If I want to play a spellcaster I should not risk killing myself to do so. I'm entitled to play the game just like warrior players are.

Magic should be costly, yet it is functionally free after an initial investment.

I have every right to play a spellcaster as any other player wanting to play whatever character they want as much as the game has spellcasters. D&D has magic. It does not need to apologize for it. There are plenty of game systems with no magic or if you do it will kill your character. I don't play those games because they don't interest me, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't exist. They exist for those players who like those ideas or game mechanics or whatever floats their boat.

Psyren

2024-07-12, 11:54 AM

I mean... you can do the sorcerer as a psion, and I don't even mean Aberrant Mind. Just use Spell Points and Subtle Spell everything. When you run out of sorcery points, convert a few slots to get more. Sure that means you'll have fewer slots than a traditional sorcerer, but that's probably the tradeoff a "Psion class" would have needed to make too, in exchange for the advantage of their magic being unnoticeable and uncounterable.

Note too that the new sorcerer eventually gets to add two metamagics to one spell, so you wouldn't even be giving up all your other metamagic to do this - though of course you'll burn through your points even faster.

Aberrant Mind has an easier time doing this (since they get auto/cheaper-subtle on various enchantments and illusions) but any sorc can do it.

^ Agreed, and I'll add: PCs are supposed to be rare/exceptional already. How many people do you meet in real life who declare themselves to be "adventurers?" How many churches have true clerics as opposed to lay-priests and parishioners? It being 'easy' for PCs to become full spellcasters doesn't mean that they aren't rare in the fiction.

JellyPooga

2024-07-12, 01:52 PM

These sound an awful lot like your own personal preferences for how you think TTRPG magic should work, rather than failings or magic being "done really badly" for everyone else.

Of course they sound like my personal preference. I wrote them.[/obiwanvoice] :smallwink:

It's also a preference based on my interpretation of just about every magic, sorcery, psionics, hoodoo or witchcraft you care to read in fiction, mythology or history. If we're taking the game divorced from that which inspires it then there's no point in playing; just go roll dice and marvel at the pointless numbers.

My one tenet of magic is: Magic should be fun.I disagree. The game should be fun. Magic doesn't necessarily have to be for that to be true, per se. There's plenty of systems that make magic punishing and that aspect of the game does not necessarily detract from the enjoyment of the game and might even add to it. Take Call of Cthulhu, for example. Magic in that game is a short road to insanity and destruction if used without caution and that's a feature of the game, not a bug. I wouldn't call using magic fun in CoC; not in the same way I would Earthdawn or GURPS, not as a player, but it can be a powerful or necessary tool to complete or expedite the adventure or narrative.

Players should not be punished for doing what the game says they can do. I quite agree. That doesn't actually contradict my point; the game says "magic is all these things" and that being the case, players should indeed be allowed to do that. My contention is that D&D's vision, per the rules, of magic simply does not match up to what magic should be (in my opinion). Magic can be punishing, costly, dangerous, difficult and a whole lot more and still be fun for a player that wants to engage with that system. D&D has simplified magic, made it accessible, hom*ogenised and above all, a bit boring. How many topics, threads, discourses or discussions about D&D magic boil down to "Oh, I just cast X", solving with a simple check box being marked off, what could, should or wanted to be something more complex, engaging, mysterious or otherwise actually interesting to play? Is it awesome to get that little dopamine hit from the success? Of course it is; it's what makes mobile games such a lucrative concern. Does that make it a good magic system though? It's my opinion not.

Now, I might be off my rocker, but does D&D not have vastly more players than those games? Popular doesn't mean good. See previous comment regarding mobile games. Also see; junk food, short-form media content and 90's boy bands.

Darth Credence

2024-07-12, 02:21 PM

I disagree. The game should be fun. Magic doesn't necessarily have to be for that to be true, per se. There's plenty of systems that make magic punishing and that aspect of the game does not necessarily detract from the enjoyment of the game and might even add to it. Take Call of Cthulhu, for example. Magic in that game is a short road to insanity and destruction if used without caution and that's a feature of the game, not a bug. I wouldn't call using magic fun in CoC; not in the same way I would Earthdawn or GURPS, not as a player, but it can be a powerful or necessary tool to complete or expedite the adventure or narrative.

I know you disagree - I read your tenets. I was disagreeing with you.

I don't play games where magic isn't fun, because I want magic to be fun. This is a personal preference thing, not an absolute, and if you enjoy having magic fit your tenets, great! I don't.

And that you have read books or whatever that fits your tenets doesn't mean that that is what magic is, or even what most people think magic should be. It means you read stuff that matches what you like about magic.

You say magic should not be reliable. Why? Plenty of works have magic as reliable - input A gets result B. Take Mistborn, an incredibly popular series of novels by Brian Sanderson. Magic in it is reliable - burn pewter, you get the pewter effect. You would only fail to get the effect if someone is actively countering you.

You say magic should be rare. Why? Plenty of works have magic as quite common. Take Weis and Hickman's Darksword series - everyone has magic, except the hero. Magic is life.

You say magic should be dangerous. Why? Not even considering many things where magic is not dangerous to the wielder, all making magic dangerous to the user does is make magic not fun. But again, plenty of stories have magic not be dangerous to the user. Heck, I have a harder time coming up with works where this is true than false. How about I just throw out the overwhelming majority of litRPG books.

You say magic should be costly. Why? Isn't the point of magic to kind of cheat the universe, and get something for nothing? If the story isn't a parable about how you can't get something for nothing, magic is generally a cheaper option.

Your tenets work for you. They don't work for everyone. Looking at this thread, they don't even work for most.

Psyren

2024-07-12, 02:44 PM

I'm good with the game as written, thanks. Hard pass.

There's plenty of systems that make magic punishing and that aspect of the game does not necessarily detract from the enjoyment of the game and might even add to it.

I'm glad you recognize that, have fun playing one of those.

How many topics, threads, discourses or discussions about D&D magic boil down to "Oh, I just cast X", solving with a simple check box being marked off, what could, should or wanted to be something more complex, engaging, mysterious or otherwise actually interesting to play?

In my experience, the vast majority of those threads, topics, discourses and discussions didn't actually read or take into account the limitations of the silver-bullet spell in question, which makes it seem more like an easy answer than it actually is.

Popular doesn't mean good.

It doesn't mean bad either. What it means is "this is why we designed our for-profit game this way."

ZRN

2024-07-12, 04:12 PM

In exchange Jermemy Crawford has emphasized that spells can now heal more hit point and deal more damage.

Am I alone in thinking that healing and blasting are the most boring parts of spellcasting?

I dont mean to be a tremendous sourpuss, but Im getting the feeling that 5.5 is a poor fit for players that that like magic that isnt just hit point stuff.

1. Is the bolded part accurate - spells will deal more damage? I don't recall him ever saying that, and we haven't really seen anything in the playtest or recent reveals to that effect.

2. It sounds like the changes to spells (beyond what we've seen in the playtest) are pretty minimal, and basically directed at trimming "overpowered" or "must-have" spells.

Psyren

2024-07-12, 05:27 PM

1. Is the bolded part accurate - spells will deal more damage? I don't recall him ever saying that, and we haven't really seen anything in the playtest or recent reveals to that effect.

2. It sounds like the changes to spells (beyond what we've seen in the playtest) are pretty minimal, and basically directed at trimming "overpowered" or "must-have" spells.

He did say some underpowered spells were being rebalanced to hit harder; the example he gave was Flamestrike. But I see that more as bringing weak damage spells up to par than buffing them across the board.

Schwann145

2024-07-13, 12:06 AM

Players should not be punished for doing what the game says they can do.
Why not? Risk/Reward dynamics are as old as time, and there's no reason it couldn't be implemented into D&D game design, as it once was.
Instead, we have Same Risk/Greater Reward for being a spellcaster? That doesn't seem right...

I'm entitled to play the game just like warrior players are.
You're as entitled to play the game as the rest of your group, but spellcasters are not entitled to the same play experience as non-spellcasters.

...and I'll add: PCs are supposed to be rare/exceptional already.
Says who? The game doesn't make any such promises.
This is widely spread propaganda in online discussions, but it's entirely player-injected. Whether you're "supposed to be" rare/exceptional/whatever is entirely up to each individual table, and the game has no say in it.

It sounds like the changes to spells (beyond what we've seen in the playtest) are pretty minimal, and basically directed at trimming "overpowered" or "must-have" spells.
I wonder...
I'm willing to bet the vast majority of "overpowered or must-have" spells won't see any meaningful changes. Spells like Absorb Elements, Shield, Wall spells, Fireball (for the dps side of things), etc.
Instead they're changing things like summoning spells to no longer summon, instead of including tips and advice to DMs for dealing with many enemies at once. It smacks of "appease the loud complainers" rather than anything else, IMO. We'll see though.

grarrrg

2024-07-13, 08:55 AM

Says who? The game doesn't make any such promises.
This is widely spread propaganda in online discussions, but it's entirely player-injected. Whether you're "supposed to be" rare/exceptional/whatever is entirely up to each individual table, and the game has no say in it.

You are correct. Because the most popular Player Class is 'Commoner', and as you try to go about doing farm chores all these NPC level 20 Wizards keep walking past demanding you give them Quests to go on.

KorvinStarmast

2024-07-13, 10:29 AM

1. Wish does not need to become more powerful.
2. Arcane Magic should be rare, dangerous to use and powerful.
3. As to what useful changes arrive ... we'll see.

Slipjig

2024-07-13, 10:58 AM

How about I just throw out the overwhelming majority of litRPG books.

Mistborn is an interesting example. I've always argued that those aren't actually fantasy novels. They are superhero novels in a fantasy setting. The characters didn't work for their powers, they were just born with them. Everybody has a clearly defined limits to their powers, and in most cases they can do exactly one thing. Those aren't wizards, they're X-Men.

And I think there's something to the argument that D&D has drained all the "weird" out of magic. If you look at classic fantasy (and the real-world folklore that inspired it) spellcasters usually lived in semi-isolation because they had strange habits and tended to be a bit eccentric, if not outright dangerous. And magic in those stories always has a cost, and greater workings are generally somewhat dangerous to the caster.

At this point, magic in D&D has all the mystery of a smartphone app: I press this button on my phone, and I get a burrito. I press this button on my wand, and I get a Firebolt. Heck, the DoorDash-ed burrito at least has a COST, the Firebolt doesn't even have that.

Pooky the Imp

2024-07-13, 11:30 AM

I see where you're coming from, but I can't say I agree with these.

"Magic should not be reliable"

I don't see why not. This certainly isn't any sort of common convention. Indeed, in the vast majority of settings I'm aware of, magic is largely reliable. Usually the only time it starts to get unreliable is when characters ask higher beings for assistance or start playing with powerful magic/artefacts that they don't fully understand.

I certainly don't think unreliability (beyond attack rolls or saving throws) would improve D&D magic.

"Magic should be rare, yet d&d hands it out like candy."

Magic being rare is entirely dependant on the setting. I'll grant that my personal preference is for magic to be a little rarer, but that's not the only way to make it work.

That being said, I do think that D&D fails to appreciate the consequences of magic being common. For example, one of the most important things in all of human history is food production. One of the most devastating things - especially in earlier ages - is disease. D&D has low-level spells that effectively nullify both of those pressures, yet this never seems to be reflected in any meaningful way in the setting.

"Magic should be dangerous, but the caster is always safe.
Magic should be costly, yet it is functionally free after an initial investment."

These I so agree with.

I've put them together because I think they represent the same thing (though most systems tend to lean more towards one or the other, rather than both).

In essence, it's usually good if there's a reason why magic isn't the first resort. Or if casters at least need to pause and think before casting a spell.

Especially given just how powerful many D&D spells are, I do think some cost or risk would benefit the magic system overall.

Pex

2024-07-13, 11:36 AM

Why not? Risk/Reward dynamics are as old as time, and there's no reason it couldn't be implemented into D&D game design, as it once was.
Instead, we have Same Risk/Greater Reward for being a spellcaster? That doesn't seem right...

Integrity. If you don't want your players to do something just say they can't do it. Don't let them do it but regret they did it. It's insulting.

MoiMagnus

2024-07-13, 11:55 AM

They are superhero novels in a fantasy setting.

I think this term is a fair enough description of the direction D&D is roughly going toward since quite some time.
Although it still has a long journey before reaching its destination (especially for martials characters).

Though I'd wish I'd understood earlier (a decade ago rather than a few years ago) that "superhero fantasy" was not what D&D was supposed to be*, I would probably not have invested that much time and energy into it, time that could have better been used learning other more adequate systems for my tastes.

*My early expectations of D&D were heavily influenced by "Dungeons & Dragons: The Fantasy Adventure Board Game (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6366/dungeons-and-dragons-the-fantasy-adventure-board-g)", and by Descents: Journeys in the Dark (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17226/descent-journeys-in-the-dark). And while I did expect and actual TTRPG to have immensely more "roleplaying" to it than a boardgame, those games still defined my expectation of how much magic should be present and easy to use in a D&D game. And honestly, I don't think I've ever been interested in actual classical medieval fantasy.

Psyren

2024-07-13, 02:48 PM

Says who?

..The PHB? Ever read it? :smalltongue:

"Adventurers are extraordinary people, driven by a thirst for excitement into a life that others would never dare lead. They are heroes, compelled to explore the dangerous places of the world and take on the challenges that lesser women and men can't stand against."

And while you're refreshing yourself on that, take a glance at the DMG too:

"Even 1st-level characters are heroes, set apart from the common people by natural characteristics, learned skills, and the hint of a greater destiny that lies before them."

It's not 'propaganda' at all, it's right there in your rulebooks. Intentionally.

Waazraath

2024-07-13, 03:31 PM

D&D does magic really badly out of the gate, before even looking at individual spells or effects.

I know you disagree - I read your tenets. I was disagreeing with you.

I don't play games where magic isn't fun, because I want magic to be fun. This is a personal preference thing, not an absolute, and if you enjoy having magic fit your tenets, great! I don't.

You say magic should be rare. Why? Plenty of works have magic as quite common. Take Weis and Hickman's Darksword series - everyone has magic, except the hero. Magic is life.

Your tenets work for you. They don't work for everyone. Looking at this thread, they don't even work for most.

I'm with JellyPooga on this one. The conversation above strikes me as the proverbial conversation between the sociologist and the antropologist - the first finding an interesting pattern, the latter claiming 'all nice and well but I know this neighborhood X in city Y where things are different". Both can be true of course, but the fact that exceptions exist does not not mean the pattern doesn't exist. I applaud Darth Credence for the examples found, but I don't find them too convincing:
- Brian Sanderson: I'm not familiar with all his works, but know that other types of magic in his mythology very much put the practicioner at risk and are heavyliy restricted in what they can do (sand mages)
- Weis and Hickman's Darksword series - yeah, everybody but the main character has magic, but what they did is reversing the trope 'magic is rare'. It's a fun gimmick, that does not disprove the trope though, it only works because usually it's the other way around imo.
- 'plenty of stories magic is not dangerous' - I'd argue that in the vast majority of influencial historical and fantasy literature it is. From Tolkien (Gandalf almost being broken cause the balrog counters his lock spell) all the way to Faust.
- 'Isn't the point of magic to kind of cheat the universe, and get something for nothing?' --> often the cost is reputation, or one's soul, or at least years of ones life reading dusty tomes (Discworld).

Maybe not always all 4 apply, but pretty much darn all the time some of these 4 do.

It is not reliable. Monsters make their saving throws. I could miss on an attack roll.

I really don't understand the 'am entitled to' part here. Yes, everybody should be able to have a fun game, I don't think anybody disagrees. The discussion seems to me 'how to create the most fun spellcaster' for the game.

And yeah, that depends of course (duh). But I think the key is here 'how to balance'. In fantasy literature, magic simply being 'everything else but more and better' could easily lead to boring mary sue type of characters. Not to mention the stories which are meant to warn for That Which Cannot Be Named. But for games, you additionally need to balance your magician against the other characters. Disregarding mary sue's, it's no fun if magic is 'everything else but more and better' for the other players.

The have been a number of solutions for this, in D&D and other games, among others:
- by making magic extremely powerful and versatile, but at great cost (gold, years of life, damage, etc. - most versions of DND up to a point, definitely 2e)
- by making magic extremely powerful and versatile, but only with preparation (vancian magic - in DnD up to 3.5)
- by makinge magic and non-magic almost the same (either by having 4e style 'magic' which is roughly the same thing others are doing but described differently, or by non-magic being almost magiically in nature like in 3.5 Tome of Battle or Incarnum)
- by making magic more powerful than other stuff but limiting it to x times/day (most versions of D&D)

in my view, 5e leans pretty hard on the latest point mentioned (it leans on several - some spells are costly, some are dangerous, but the main balancing point is 'the adventuring day'). It has magic more powerful and versatile than what non casters (generally) can do, but when dungeoncrawling and doing the suggested number of encounters/day, it works fine: sometimes a caster ends an encounter, and sometimes he does hardly anything cause 'out of spells' or 'saving the last few ones for a potential later encounter'.

Of course, almost as long as 5e, there are complaints on this balancing point, because people explicitly reject the suggested number of encounters and sometimes explicitly want a 5 min adventuring day to be possible (yes, I'm aware that some claim that even with the suggested number of encounters there is a balance problem, but this is simply not my experience so I won't go into that). If I understand it correctly, the OP (and following posts) suggests that the designers listened, and we go back to a more 4e system, where the power and versatility of magic seems to be tuned down.

Personally, I don't care that much, as long as a good balancing point is found. But the above almost ensures that there never will be a solution which makes everybody happy.

Arkhios

2024-07-13, 03:32 PM

Slightly off topic, but I think that the reliability - or the lack thereof - of arcane magic, is something one can easily port in as a houserule. A DM might add in some rule that gives a risk and reward kind of situation for arcane casters specifically.

grarrrg

2024-07-13, 04:12 PM

- Brian Sanderson: I'm not familiar with all his works, but know that other types of magic in his mythology very much put the practicioner at risk and are heavyliy restricted in what they can do (sand mages).
- 'plenty of stories magic is not dangerous' - I'd argue that in the vast majority of influencial historical and fantasy literature it is. From Tolkien (Gandalf almost being broken cause the balrog counters his lock spell) all the way to Faust.
- 'Isn't the point of magic to kind of cheat the universe, and get something for nothing?' --> often the cost is reputation, or one's soul, or at least years of ones life reading dusty tomes (Discworld).

Everyone is kind of dancing around this, so I feel the need to spell it out:
Magic can be both 'perfectly safe' _AND_ 'risky' in the same setting.

How can vary. Maybe simple magic is 100% safe, but world-altering isn't. Maybe there is a Deity of Magic that sets the rules for each spell. It might be a simple difference of Practice and Understanding.

Sanderson: some forms of magic are safe, some aren't.

Gandalf: yeah the fight kinda went bad at points, but it's a FIGHT, meaning there's another dude 'doing things'. At other points in story Gandalf does magic perfectly fine with no apparent risk.

"often the cost is... years of ones life reading dusty tomes" Sounds super terrifying that one.

Regarding DnD, I'm just going to assume that the spells in the book are "the safe ones" (note that even some of those carry some risk).
Sure, there's probably a crazy lich or ten researching 'new' spells, which might be unpredictable/dangerous, but those aren't (normally) the Players.

Schwann145

2024-07-13, 04:20 PM

..The PHB? Ever read it? :smalltongue:

And while you're refreshing yourself on that, take a glance at the DMG too:

"Even 1st-level characters are heroes, set apart from the common people by natural characteristics, learned skills, and the hint of a greater destiny that lies before them."

It's not 'propaganda' at all, it's right there in your rulebooks. Intentionally.

I think you should familiarize yourself with "poetic license." :smalltongue:

Rafaelfras

2024-07-13, 05:16 PM

Everyone is kind of dancing around this, so I feel the need to spell it out:
Magic can be both 'perfectly safe' _AND_ 'risky' in the same setting.

Sanderson: some forms of magic are safe, some aren't.

Gandalf: yeah the fight kinda went bad at points, but it's a FIGHT, meaning there's another dude 'doing things'. At other points in story Gandalf does magic perfectly fine with no apparent risk.

"often the cost is... years of ones life reading dusty tomes" Sounds super terrifying that one.

I agree with this.
The settings have a lot of room for making magic more interesting and lots of them have magic that fit in all those criteria, without needing to hinder the player.

The years of study on old tomes are pass by, the pact is made and the innate magic is already controlled at the time you start your adventure so you can take that reliable magic with you. But the world still has that magic that is lost, is mysterious and dangerous and can kill you if you mess with it. It's up to the settings set up these things and the DM to set it and let players engage with it. Like the Mythals in FR, the draconic orbs and the test of high sorcery in Dragon Lance and lots of other example.

If magic is just too costly, too dangerous and too unreliable it HAS to give exceptional results or it will not be engaged by the players because just isn't worth it. And if the end result is too good (as it have to be because it costs too much) it will eclipse everything else.

Trafalgar

2024-07-13, 06:54 PM

D&D does magic really badly out of the gate, before even looking at individual spells or effects.

You are not wrong. For me, this is a problem many have with 5e though I would characterize it differently.

Generally, I think you can break fantasy TTRPGs into "High Magic" and "Low Magic" settings. Magic is ubiquitous in a "high magic" setting. Magic is rare in a "low magic" setting. All D&D editions 2e and earlier had much more of a "low magic" feel if you started at first level since your wizard could only cast one spell per day. You could make those editions feel more "high magic" by just starting out at a higher level. I think if you look at most 5+ level modules during that time, they feel pretty high magic with a lot of high level spell casting NPCs with multiple magical items.

Compare that with 5e. A level 1 wizard can memorize two level 1 spells and cast an unlimited number of cantrips. And don't forget ritual magic. Most characters have some sort of magical ability. A quiver can only hold 20 arrows but anyone with the firebolt cantrip can cast it 100 times a day. You can use Mage Hand to get around a lot of traps and puzzles. This kind of play at low levels makes 5e a high magic setting default.

Now I am not trying to put 5e down. I have played a lot of 5e. For a high magic setting, I think its the best system out there. In my opinion, you can't do a low magic setting with 5e without home ruling in a lot of nerfs and spell limitations that your players won't be happy about. You are better off choosing a different system.

I will give a more specific example. Let's say you want to run a Dark-Sun-esque wilderness campaign were the characters are going to have trouble with finding just food and water as they explore a barren world. But to make that work, you have to either ban druids or ban certain spells like good berry and create/destroy water for it to work.

Now, based on system popularity, it would seem that you and I are in the minority. And I am not saying our fun is better than their fun. Its just different kinds of fun.

In summary, of you want a game with that old school low magic feel, play 1e or B/X. If you want to play a game were the any magic can be risky, play Warhammer Fantasy or Dungeon Crawl Classics. If you want to play a TTRPG were most characters have magic or spell like abilities, play 5e.

Psyren

2024-07-13, 07:02 PM

I think you should familiarize yourself with "poetic license." :smalltongue:

Lol sure. Gold star for effort :smallcool:

Dark Sun needing alternate rules to work is how Dark Sun has always worked. That's not unique to 5e.

I get what you're saying, PC magic is a bit more ubiquitous in 5e because cantrips don't suck anymore and rituals exist. But even the people playing those older editions figured out that you need to modify the base game sometimes to get the exact feel you want, that lesson still applies today. It's not a new thing.

Trafalgar

2024-07-13, 08:02 PM

Dark Sun needing alternate rules to work is how Dark Sun has always worked. That's not unique to 5e.

There is a big difference though.

With Darks Sun for 2e, characters became more powerful. They had higher stats, max stats went way up, everyone started at third level, and everyone got a psionic wild talent.

With AD&D or B/X, if you want a more "high magic" game just start everyone at a higher level and maybe change how you roll for stats. Maybe give everyone a free magic item.

But with 5e, if you want to play something different than high magic superhero fantasy, you have to start eliminating spells and nerfing abilities because level 1 spellcasters have so much power relative to older versions and other systems. Because the spellcasting bottom in 5e is so high, it's not as flexible as earlier editions of the game.

Psyren

2024-07-13, 08:41 PM

There is a big difference though.

With Darks Sun for 2e, characters became more powerful. They had higher stats, max stats went way up, everyone started at third level, and everyone got a psionic wild talent.

With AD&D or B/X, if you want a more "high magic" game just start everyone at a higher level and maybe change how you roll for stats. Maybe give everyone a free magic item.

So... do that then? I'm just not really seeing how that's a negative. You can throw in variants like Gritty Rest and Slow Natural Healing while you're at it (DMG 267.)

And it's not like older Dark Sun didn't eliminate things too. Clerics and Paladins were de facto banned, and as for arcanists, even if you were preserving it would be hard to get mobs to give you the benefit of the doubt before the pitchforks came out, so a lot of the powers you did have had to be kept under wraps a lot of the time.

Pex

2024-07-13, 09:18 PM

I do want to say I disagree with the original premise that doing damage and healing are boring. I approve of the buff to the healing spells. I never thought they were enough. Healer feat and short rest did more healing. I'm not expecting and wanting heal all damage from them, but I want them worth casting during combat more than just be glorified Spare The Dying. I don't always want to play the healbot, but I find fun on the role when I do. As for damage, giving the enemy the dead condition is the best condition to give them. Other types of spells are certainly fun to cast, but I enjoy Fire Bolt and Fireball rolling lots of clickety clack math rocks. If I get the killing blow, great, but it's just as fun and useful to damage an enemy and then the warrior gets the killing blow because I brought the monster down in hit points his damage is enough to finish it off. I don't always want to play a blaster, but I find fun in the role when I do.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-13, 09:37 PM

I agree with pretty much all of this.

I know they specifically did away with this kind of thing in 5e, but it's kind of a shame damage/healing spells don't scale some with proficiency bonus (or maybe some built in cantrip like scaling). Unless they quite strong when you get them, damage/healing (and actually summoning now that I think about it) spells grow weaker so much faster than other buff/debuff/control spells because the latter group scales tend to scale with the characters/targets even when cast from the same spell level.

Kane0

2024-07-14, 02:46 AM

I once fiddled with a twist on the concept of magic driving you mad over time, that it instead warped you into the monstrous races. It didn't really pan well in playtesting

Blatant Beast

2024-07-14, 08:59 AM

This matches my experience playing a cleric, as well. I would prepare Healing Word, just in case, but ideally, any healing would happen out of combat, either through the efficient Prayer of Healing spell, or through Short Rests and the Healer Feat.

I was playing a cleric when Tasha's Cauldron was released....using Aura of Healing as a cleric was insanely fun.

Pex

2024-07-14, 10:10 AM

Rafaelfras

2024-07-14, 10:42 AM

I agree with pretty much all of this.

I agree with it too.

Yes, you can really notice what you can do with a fireball when you get it compared to level 10 or 15. Damage spells from 1st and 2nd level are weaker than cantrips at high level play. Playing evoker helped me to mitigate that specially with Magic Missile becoming really strong and reliable to do damage .
Debuffs that are good will keep up being good, albeit more powerful monster get better at resisting then getting a dragon or an ogre on web nets you the same results.

Yes. Usually lots of proposed fixes just render the caster or at least the spells themselves in a point where they are no longer useful

jjordan

2024-07-14, 11:16 AM

It looks to me like WoTC is continuing to emphasize the videogame approach to design and is paring down to the basics: the HP meter.

Psyren

2024-07-14, 12:06 PM

I agree with pretty much all of this.

I agree with it too.

This is premature until we actually see the new damage spells themselves. Crawford for instance said that Flame Strike is being buffed to hit more in line with how a 5th-level spell should, which suggests they're revisiting what that means in general. And the few leveled blasting spells we've seen so far, like Power Word Kill and Searing Smite, do seem to hit much harder than their 2014 counterparts.

Upcasting lower-level blasting spells should be weaker (but not too much weaker) than an on-level blasting spell, because that's part of the tradeoff for multiclassing or just plain not picking those higher-level blasts in lieu of more defense and utility. It's a difficult tightrope to walk but I'm looking forward to their attempt.

It looks to me like WoTC is continuing to emphasize the videogame approach to design and is paring down to the basics: the HP meter.

KorvinStarmast

2024-07-14, 12:06 PM

...........it's right there in your rulebooks. Intentionally. Yep. We are in violent agreement.

Dark Sun needing alternate rules to work is how Dark Sun has always worked. That's not unique to 5e. Each setting has its own quirks. That's a good thing, be it Barovia, Eberron, Athas, Greyhawk, etc.

JellyPooga

2024-07-14, 12:09 PM

Define "hard and frustrating".

I've heard it said that tracking ammo or rations is "pointless bookkeeping", would tracking material components (assuming they had non-insignificant cost and were a consumable) count as pointless frustration for a spellcaster too?

Would sacrificing MaxHP to prepare spells count as passive aggressively trying to remove magic from the game?

Would asking for an ability check and/or additional time to prepare spells make it "too hard"? What about a roll to cast the spell in addition to one to adjudicate its effects?

If a roll to cast were implemented, would it be too much to ask for a consequence of failure?

What if any or all of the above were compensated by a higher ceiling on what magic can do?

The point isn't "Psh. Magic. Let's make it so hard that no-one wants to use it", but to actually make it different to not-magic and to exemplify such fictions as, oh, let's say Raistlin Majere, legendary D&D icon who *checks notes* almost faints casting a lvl.1 sleep spell *rustle, rustle* nearly died just becoming a mage capable of casting said sleep spell *flip, flip, flip* and was irrevocably physically changed to have an inhuman appearance and to require medical assistance in the form of tonics and tinctures for the rest of his natural span as a result of said near death experience in his backstory to be a level 1 character. Yeah, that totally consequence-free example of what D&D magic should probably look something along the lines of.

Rafaelfras

2024-07-14, 01:28 PM

Oh I totally agree with this. 10d6 for a 5th level fireball compared to 8d8 cone of cold seems fair, if anything cone of cold damage should be higher.
My main problem regarding of spell damage are spells over 6th level, as I think they lack in that department until meteor swarm.
There was no excuse to the crap damage flame strike did. So bad it was it's damage that a cleric was better of up casting spirit guardians.
This was the situation of several high level spells, making damage not a worth choice for a spell slot above 5th level and making some powerful spells even more mandatory.
Who would spend a slot on delayed blast fireball when you can use force cage instead?

Searing smite, flame strike and PWK are good changes so these spells are worth casting. As they did with blade ward, and I hope that several underpowered spells are brought up to adequate levels. People will gravitate way less to an said overpowered spell if they have options. And it's better than nerfing said spell to a point where no one will ever bother using it again

Devils_Advocate

2024-07-14, 04:24 PM

Because for many people who complain about D&D magic their solution is to make magic so hard and frustrating to use no one would actually want to play a spellcaster. They're essentially wanting to remove magic from the game without technically removing magic from the game in a passive aggressive manner.
Different people have different priorities. For some, setting is of greater importance than characters and gameplay, not just a cardboard background for fun superhero antics. In that context, a setting where magic is rare and dangerous isn't an excuse for making it hard to be a spellcaster, it's the actual reason.

(Personal anecdote: When I first started seeing the terms, my guess from context was that "CaS" and "CaW" stood for "Campaign as Story" and "Campaign as World".)

Also, not everyone who favors magic having a high cost wants it not to be worth that cost! Some want the sort of setup where Squishy McPointyHat can unleash unholy hell on a group of enemies if he can avoid damage for a couple of rounds, but if one of those enemies manages to get up in Squishy's grill, then poor Squishy is toast, which necessitates guarding Squishy very carefully. As opposed to a setup where a mage can safely cast a spell while having a sword swung in her face, but that spell ain't gonna end the whole enemy team in one go either. That's the "cheap, easy" approach to game balance: making options more balanced with each other by just making them function more similarly to each other, e.g. making a Wizard work more like a Fighter. And that's certainly viable, but the logical endpoint there is to give every character the same flavor-neutral capabilities and leave it to players to describe them as roundhouse kicks or blasts of fire or whatever.

And there's lots to be said for that approach! But presumably, to nearly anyone who wants to play Dungeons & Dragons instead of a game without these weird "character classes", there are things to be said against it as well. And if you can acknowledge that, then you can also acknowledge that D&D magic has lost something since the olden days: it's not as special as it once was; sharp edges that rendered it more dangerous to both foe and wielder have been sanded down. Classes have become less specialized, more hom*ogenized (while at all times lying somewhere between pure specialization and pure hom*ogenization). Healing is another example: when everyone can restore a total of more than 100% of their own hit points in a day, having a designated healer becomes at best just "another way of doing things". Character role can't make a big, meaningful difference to the extent that... character role isn't allowed to make a big, meaningful difference.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-14, 04:55 PM

It is a little premature sure, but I am not expecting a large overhaul of spells (though I do think that is something the game would have benefited from). Also, my point wasn't about upcasting, it was about the nature of spell effects. Take Hellish Rebuke, Absorb Elements, Shield, and Silvery Barbs. All level 1 reaction spells that don't use concentration. Why do you think we hear about the latter 3 all the time (usually in the terms of calling them OP), but not Hellish Rebuke? Especially with mid to higher level characters? It's because the latter 3 have effects that inherently scale with character level, while Hellish Rebuke is always just 11 damage whether you are dealing with a 7 HP Goblin at level 1, or a 300 HP Ancient Dragon in T4.

But presumably, to nearly anyone who wants to play Dungeons & Dragons instead of a game without these weird "character classes", there are things to be said against it as well. And if you can acknowledge that, then you can also acknowledge that D&D magic has lost something since the olden days: it's not as special as it once was; sharp edges that rendered it more dangerous to both foe and wielder have been sanded down. Classes have become less specialized, more hom*ogenized (while at all times lying somewhere between pure specialization and pure hom*ogenization). Healing is another example: when everyone can restore a total of more than 100% of their own hit points in a day, having a designated healer becomes at best just "another way of doing things". Character role can't make a big, meaningful difference to the extent that... character role isn't allowed to make a big, meaningful difference.

It's easy to say this, but do you remember why out of combat character intrinsic healing was buffed so much? It's because the vast majority of players don't want to play a "Healer". The same is kind of true for your end the fight made of glass spellcaster. The vast majority don't want to make their whole thing about keeping another character untouched so they can do cool things. Even the spell caster in that scenario doesn't have it great. Spend most of the fight doing nothing with the hope of being able to end it with one move. Those are all great mechanic ironically enough in a video game where you control a party instead of an individual. But players that get just one character don't want to be pigeonholed in to what the party needs. One of the most interesting things about 5e is the fact you can have a very unbalanced group in terms of roles/playstyles and still find ways to over come the challenges. A party of all rogues or Wizards isn't nearly as foolhardy as it may have been in editions past.

Pex

2024-07-14, 06:14 PM

Define "hard and frustrating".

Boring, yes, but not ruining magic. It's why arcane/divine focus exists, to not have to bother except for the more potent spells tagging on expensive material components. Some DMs handwave archer arrows unless they're magic or rationing food or counting what you're carrying down to the ounce worrying about encumbrance. Other DMs are very particular about such things. This is a matter of playstyle.

Would sacrificing MaxHP to prepare spells count as passive aggressively trying to remove magic from the game?

Yes, because I should not be killing myself for doing what the game said I could do.

Would asking for an ability check and/or additional time to prepare spells make it "too hard"? What about a roll to cast the spell in addition to one to adjudicate its effects?

They already exist in rolling to hit or making the saving throw. That's the game part of using magic. If you add in an additional chance of failure of having to roll as to whether you get to cast the spell at all as a matter of course then yes, that's banning magic. I'm well aware of 3E/Pathfinder concentration checks to cast defensively to avoid an AoO or other reasons. Those are fine because they are due to circ*mstances of gameplay, not the audacity of how dare you cast a spell anywhere at anytime just because you feel like it.

If a roll to cast were implemented, would it be too much to ask for a consequence of failure?

Yes, because I should not be killing myself for doing what the game said I could do. This isn't different than rolling a Natural 1 should not cause critical fumble kill yourself or a friend and similar screw you for warriors.

What if any or all of the above were compensated by a higher ceiling on what magic can do?

If a spell is so powerful you feel the need to punish the player for doing it then don't have that spell exist in the first place.

Limitations on magic is not the problem. The problem lies in the details of what those limitations are. I find it bad game design for a system to make a player regret doing what the game said he could do. I know such games exist, but that's why I don't play them. I also don't go to their game forums if they exist and tell them they should change to what I want.

Different people have different priorities. For some, setting is of greater importance than characters and gameplay, not just a cardboard background for fun superhero antics. In that context, a setting where magic is rare and dangerous isn't an excuse for making it hard to be a spellcaster, it's the actual reason.

People are welcome to play those games. D&D is not one of them and does not need to apologize for it nor change to accommodate.

Sorinth

2024-07-14, 06:46 PM

I haven't read any spells since the early UA so I can't comment directly, but it seems strange to argue that damage isn't interesting and complain about a nerf to summon spells given that the main selling point of those spells is often they do the most the damage. So long as things like Charm Person is left somewhat open ended as to what a charmed NPC is willing to do, or that illusions still allow for creativity then I doubt spells will be significantly less interesting in the new edition.

Schwann145

2024-07-14, 07:17 PM

If players don't want to be pigeonholed into what the party needs, then they intrinsically don't like ttrpg-style gameplay. Because that's what D&D *is.*
What is being suggested here seems to be, "everyone in the party should be fully self-sufficient and capable of ignoring the party to do their own thing."

That's not role-playing.

Why doesn't the Fighter want to defend his allies? Why did the Cleric pick the Life domain just to be filling their daily slots up with Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapon? Why does the gal who spent her entire youth with her nose buried in tomes get to stand toe-to-toe with the folks who learned how to use weapons and armor, as their equals in martial situations?
Because it's good for dopamine release, which is good for sales?

GeneralVryth

2024-07-14, 07:45 PM

If players don't want to be pigeonholed into what the party needs, then they intrinsically don't like ttrpg-style gameplay. Because that's what D&D *is.*

And yet that is not what 5e IS. And it's still D&D, one of the most popular iterations of it at that.

What is being suggested here seems to be, "everyone in the party should be fully self-sufficient and capable of ignoring the party to do their own thing."

That's not role-playing.

Your conflating the ideas of needing something and benefiting from it. You're also assuming, not needing things is the same as everyone being fully self sufficient which isn't true either. If you need something, you can't realistically play/progress the game without it. If a dedicated healer is the only way to heal, then you probably need it to really progress the game without DM fiat. Where as if you just benefit from something, that usually means it's one of multiple possible ways to approach something, likely with a better set of trade offs. NEEDing specific character designs or roles in TTRPGs is bad game design because it pigeonholes players and and can often put someone in a position where they are forced to play something they don't want to. On the other hand if you have things the party can benefit from, that tends to be good game design because it gives different ways for characters to distinguish themselves in the group.

Your assuming that a player who builds a character for something doesn't want to do that, which is obviously ridiculous. And you're mistaking a party not needing things, as characters not having strengths and weaknesses, which is also ridiculous.

Characters can have strengths and weaknesses, without a game design that requires certain roles/archetypes. This is something 5e does very well, and is likely one of the reasons for its popularity.

MrStabby

2024-07-14, 08:26 PM

I think a lot of the class changes look good, but I am with the OP in some concerns about the spells.

Actually the buffed healing I am mostly fine with but the damage - less so.

Damage was kind of what casters sucked at. Yes, spells like fireball were an exception (and eldritch blast) but in broad-brush terms if you wanted to do damage, that was the martial's thing. You might be better at healing, utility, controll, debuff and anything else you could think of but there was generally one clear area.in which the martial got to shine. Closing that gap seems risky.

Even if some spells are nerfed and even of the relative power levels of casters are reduced, there is a risk (obviously too soon to say it has happened) that casters move from being on average much more powerful whilst still situationally being less good at times, to just more reliably being just a little bit better than a martial.

I would much rather the spell buffing got pushed to feats like improving elemental affinity - no more casters being able to do everything well, that you need to invest and specialise to be at peak performance in an area.

I also agree that fun spells are the spells that feel magical not.just like another attack reskinned. Banishment or dominate person or wall of thorns or plant growth or raise dead feel supernatural and cool. Fireball... meh, it's a passing bit of fun but just doesn't appeal in the same way. Again, just a matter of taste, but that's mine.

I guess I don't care that flamestrike is underpowered because I don't feel the need for Clerics to be top tier blasters and damage dealers. I do care that bane kind of sucks as it does too little for an action or that bestow curse seems kind of underwhelming or that wall of force just seems better than other wall spells and so on.

Psyren

2024-07-14, 08:50 PM

This list just proves the point though - the best spells for their level will continue to be the ones that do things other than straightforward damage and healing, thereby rendering the OP's concern overblown if not entirely moot.

And that's fine! A setting or variant ruleset where magic is dangerous is completely doable in 5e. But with the hypothetical exception of a future Dark Sun supplement, that doesn't fit any of the printed settings as written, barring localized phenomena like Weave tears or the like.

(Un)Inspired

2024-07-14, 09:13 PM

I think a lot of the class changes look good, but I am with the OP in some concerns about the spells.

Actually the buffed healing I am mostly fine with but the damage - less so.

Thank you for so well articulating what my thoughts were when I started this thread. When I want to cast magic I want it to feel magical, not just like Im attacking but with magical flavor. I want to be able to solve problems with wondrous supernatural solutions. I worry that with an increased focus on magic for damage and healing, then what I find interesting about playing magicians will be more sidelined in 5.5.

I want to Scry on the beast in the castle, I want to tell people these arent the droids theyre looking for, I want make a bed levitate so I can fly around on it! Its okay if people want different things out of spellcasting than I do; I just wanted to speculate on what people thought spellcasting would be like in the next edition, and maybe what makes spells interesting generally speaking.

Pex

2024-07-14, 09:42 PM

Summon spells are a tricky deal. The summoned creature needs to be powerful enough you're glad it's there doing its job but not so powerful it obsoletes the warrior players. Should such spells even exist is a tough question to ask. It is more common in generic fiction cultists use rituals to summon a demon. Summon spells that require time and preplanning makes sense then and balance from there. It's the ones that go Poof There You Are Go Fight one might argue shouldn't exist, but I suppose they're legacy now spellcaster players will pout if they don't exist. Rule of thumb a summoned creature at the highest spell level you can cast should have its CR be at most one CR less than your character level with CR being two less on the safer side. It's also far better they have a specific list of creatures and only those creatures or have level appropriate stat blocks and abilities and flavor text the form. It's not really different than what was done before, just be more diligent in the summon creature statistics.

Schwann145

2024-07-14, 10:30 PM

But with the hypothetical exception of a future Dark Sun supplement, that doesn't fit any of the printed settings as written, barring localized phenomena like Weave tears or the like.

Forgotten Realms has dangerous magic. Dragonlance has dangerous magic. Eberron probably has the safest magic and it's still has the potential to be dangerous.

5e has removed itself almost entirely from the long-standing lore of it's very own campaign settings.

jjordan

2024-07-14, 10:55 PM

1) I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean. That spells will just care about damage and healing now? That's obviously not the case.
2) This phrasing suggests that learning from videogames is somehow bad? I for one don't care what medium a good idea comes from, as long as it's a good idea.
I mean that D&D is being structured so that games are a violent encounter followed by a lore dump and loot drop followed by another violent encounter. Has been for years. And WoTC seems to be leaning into this and focusing on the HP bar. Spells should do damage and heal and shouldn't slow down the game. This is the impression I've drawn from what I have seen.

Is it a good idea? From the point of view of growing the game and making money? Yep. Does it satisfy me? Nope. I'm taking the opportunity presented by 5.5 to suggest other options to my players.

Blatant Beast

2024-07-14, 11:32 PM

Forgotten Realms has dangerous magic. Dragonlance has dangerous magic. Eberron probably has the safest magic and it's still has the potential to be dangerous.

5e has removed itself almost entirely from the long-standing lore of it's very own campaign settings.

I mean that D&D is being structured so that games are a violent encounter followed by a lore dump and loot drop followed by another violent encounter. Has been for years. And WoTC seems to be leaning into this and focusing on the HP bar. Spells should do damage and heal and shouldn't slow down the game. This is the impression I've drawn from what I have seen.

Is it a good idea? From the point of view of growing the game and making money? Yep. Does it satisfy me? Nope. I'm taking the opportunity presented by 5.5 to suggest other options to my players.

What in the blazes are people even talking about?

Some spells in 1e had deleterious side effects, such as Haste aging the caster a year, but such side effects were either ignored, or relegated the Haste spell to only being cast by long lived PCs such as Elves.

Haste was a very rarely used spell in AD&D, which is historical evidence that supports what Pex has stated earlier; such features can amount to a soft ban.

By and large spells with such drawbacks, were rare in D&D, based off my memories.

There really is not a substantial history or lineage of D&D having Magic that was dangerous to casters being in the mainstream game. D&D has had an occasional product that has such features, but such elements were more fodder for other RPG systems.

As to jjjordans contentionWotC does not control peoples campaigns, I am not at all sure what they are claiming above. The online D&D Community, unfortunately, very early on became wedded to the idea that 5e was only balanced by having 8 medium combat encounters per Adventuring Day.

Quite frankly, I have always considered such advice unworkable, and frankly bad pacing. The first thing DMs should be willing to experiment with or disregard is any DMG advice on how to pace your own game.

It is your game, play it on your terms, (which I think is the point JJordan was trying to convey).

Schwann145

2024-07-15, 12:32 AM

Summoners/Conjurers just want spells that support their playstyle fantasy. The redesigned summons utterly fail to do this, instead being just blast spells by another name.
The leftover summons that weren't redesigned just aren't practically playable. Conjure Elemental takes 10 rounds to cast and demands your concentration for an hour. If they didn't make concentration so incredibly important/valuable, this would be less of an issue, but alas, they did. Planar Binding is wonderful flavor, but it's very expensive, only lasts a single day, and the casting hoops you have to jump through to make it work will make the rest of the party hate you. Gate is simply unavailable to the vast majority of tables. Etc.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-15, 12:55 AM

I know. I always thought the OP's point was moot. My point was that in retrospect because damage/healing/summing spells don't scale (without upcasting) like buffs/debuffs/control spells do, maybe they should have had some built in scaling like cantrips. This was something the designers wanted to explicitly not have in 5e after 3/3.5 but it seems like 3/3.5 may have had a point, even if the implementation was crappy (for those who don't know, this built in scaling not requiring upcasting is where the quadratic in "quadratic wizards, linear fighters" comes from, not that the comparrison was ever very accurate).

MrStabby

2024-07-15, 03:01 AM

Then a lot is DM dependant. Conjured monsters tend to be attacked focussed for effectiveness. High AC enemies will shut them down a bit more than the fighter. AoE etc is obviously tough.

I am not saying a better balance point can't be found, but that its tricky and you will still get complaints. And for a druid a big part of the attraction of the class is summoning stuff and if you are spending your concentration and one of your higher level spell slots to be overall less effective than a fighter that can also feel bad.

That's... an interesting thought. Spells kind of need to be worth it from 3 perspectives. Worth a spell prepared/known slot (so not too niche), worth the spell slot and worth the action. Some improved upscaling could help with these. It doesn't even need to be all spells, healing word is fine. I also really like what pathfinder 2 did with healing where effectively by sacrificing movement/other actions in a turn you boost the spell. If a healing spell were to condense spells like prayer of healing, cure wounds and healing wordninto an option that had an effect depending on casting time it would also make healers more attractive as it would free up spells known. I think this is one of the reasons paladins are so powerful. Lay on hands is able to cure HP and poison and disease and cleansing touch does even more at higher levels - they are so versatile as they don't need to have roles covered by spells as they are covered by class features.

Sorinth

2024-07-15, 07:13 AM

For sure it can be tricky, but the same is true for lots of other spells too, they need to be powerful enough that you do cool things but not so powerful that everyone needs to play a spellcaster, go nova every combat with the big spells and then LR.

I do think summon spells should exists, even the poof there you are ones also exist in fiction, and more importantly are an expected part of the D&D ecosystem. I think one way to handle it is to tune the spells down but introduce minion focused subclasses. Like if the spell summon demon was so-so, but the Conjurer wizard subclass had a demon pet as a major part of their abilities, possibly even just boosts to that so-so spell to bring it back inline powerwise. Then it's easier to balance and helps differentiate the classes, but yeah even this can be tricky as we saw with Shephard Druid vs Necromancer wizard, or all the issues with Beastmaster's pet, finding that balance point can be tough but when it's limited to subclass it becomes easier to adjust at the table level.

KorvinStarmast

2024-07-15, 07:30 AM

What is being suggested here seems to be, "everyone in the party should be fully self-sufficient and capable of ignoring the party to do their own thing."

That's not role-playing. Well put.

Haste was a very rarely used spell in AD&D, which is historical evidence that supports what Pex has stated earlier; such features can amount to a soft ban.

By and large spells with such drawbacks, were rare in D&D, based off my memories. Remember the rebounding lightning bolts? Remember the fire balls that filled up the volume of the passages and sometimes expanded to hit the party? AD&D 1e examples of what you refer to. :smallsmile:

The online D&D Community, unfortunately, very early on became wedded to the idea that 5e was only balanced by having 8 medium combat encounters per Adventuring Day. Uh, what? 6 to 8, and that is a "you'll be out of resources, typically, for a four person party." Try that with a three person party and you usually get a different result.

Psyren

2024-07-15, 08:06 AM

Built in damage-scaling for leveled spells would just take away the one clear advantage martials have, that being high damage for low resource expenditure. This would be a bad idea.

Forgotten Realms has dangerous magic. Dragonlance has dangerous magic. Eberron probably has the safest magic and it's still has the potential to be dangerous.

Spells should do damage and heal and shouldn't slow down the game. This is the impression I've drawn from what I have seen.

Spells do way more than that. If they don't at your table, it's because you're choosing not to use the right ones, and no book can solve that.

The summoned creature needs to be powerful enough you're glad it's there doing its job but not so powerful it obsoletes the warrior players.

The Tasha summons very clearly do this, and they've been enhanced even further since we last saw them and they got promoted to core. They're also substantially varied when it comes to stats, abilities, attack modes, damage types, and spellcaster lists.

Blatant Beast

2024-07-15, 09:09 AM

Remember the rebounding lightning bolts?

Not really. Just like in 5e, most players seemed to prefer Fireball over Lightning Bolts. Rebounding Lightning Bolts in 1e meant the spell when found and learned, was likely not used in dungeons.

Remember the fire balls that filled up the volume of the passages and sometimes expanded to hit the party? AD&D 1e examples of what you refer to.

Not to pull a Steve Balmer, but that is a feature not a bug. Find a Dungeon or new Dungeon floor and lob a Fireball down the stairs or entry hole, and clear out 33,000, (or so), cubic square feet. 1e spells technically doubled in size and volume when cast outside in 1e....Fireball got real crazy in terms of it's 1e Area of Effect.

Uh, what? 6 to 8, and that is a "you'll be out of resources, typically, for a four person party." Try that with a three person party and you usually get a different result.

Precisely, that is the whole point, one's actual game might be quite different that what the DMG assumes. One might have more players, one might have less....some groups do heavy role play, some do not. Some players hoard their resources, others are more profligate with their power usage. A DM can not assume or presume that the guidance in the DMG will always be perfectly synchronized with their game.

Theodoxus

2024-07-15, 09:27 AM

Seems like there's room for compromise. We already have spells that work better as rituals (leomund's tiny hut) than spells. If you have time to waste 1 minute, you generally have time to waste 11. And I think the 2024 version of prayer of healing shows the way. 10 minute cast to get some healing and the effects of a Short Rest? Who needs catnap now?

One thing I do miss from prior editions were spells that had casting times between 1 action and 1 minute. Full Round casting, two round casting, etc. If fireball required you to cast until the start of your next turn, it would open up options to counter that aren't just counterspell. I don't think it would also turn it into a 'never cast' spell either. Though if lightning bolt were still 1 action, you'd probably see it used more - not a bad thing, imo.

What if all spells were able to be ritually cast, but their effect was doubled? Sure, you might run into the shenanigans BB mentions with tossing fireballs down into dungeons - but that's just clearing out the foyer anyway.

But then again, it might just turn D&D into DragonBall Z, and that's not all that fun either (though being able to handwave the extra 10 minutes is certainly better than actually watching a DBZ powerup episode...

But if spells came in two flavors, or there was a class specifically built around 'magic is dangerous, but I'm brave!' that had more power, but at a much higher cost that lived side by side with the superheroic/video-gamey casters we currently have, it allows players who prefer one or the other to play at the same table. That could only be a good thing, imo, again.

Dr.Samurai

2024-07-15, 09:31 AM

Integrity. If you don't want your players to do something just say they can't do it. Don't let them do it but regret they did it. It's insulting.
I mean... this entitlement that spells should do everything and be easy with no meaningful costs is also quite insulting while the non-spellcasters are stuck playing a pared down D&D-For-Dummies version of the game.

The Designers of D&D, as people, have their own playstyles. One issue that happens, is because the designers, often play D&D with each other, they reinforce the same play style to each other, and then presume/assume that everyone else plays like them.....which I would wager is often not the case.
Not to kick the hornet's nest here but this has been my point about a certain class of player for some time now. And this is why conventional wisdom for D&D is not always suitable for a lot of tables. You've said it much more eloquently than I have.

With regards to the OP, I haven't been following the spells that closely but I suspect they will get less interesting just because the game appears to be getting less interesting across the board. In the sense that we are losing unique or interesting features for a normalized set of features that get tacked on to everything, like bonus damage dice, fly speeds, spells as features, etc.

Skrum

2024-07-15, 09:56 AM

I understand the storytelling attraction of "dangerous magic," but I strongly doubt it would be good for actual gameplay. And I strongly doubt most players would enjoy it.

Look at the threads discussing the effects of CC, and losing turns, and not doing anything because of legendary resist, or any of the other ways characters (and thus the player) can get sidelined. People want to play the game. They want to RP, they want to roll dice, they want to make decisions that feel meaningful, and they want to not wait an hour and 15 minutes for their next chance to do something. Pushing spellcasters towards some combination of 1) only get to cast a spell a few times a day, 2) higher chance of the spell not working because of the difficulty in casting it, 3) even it works the caster likely suffers debilitating drawbacks, and 4) if the spell goes off it's a win condition. That sounds awful. Like what are they doing when (4) doesn't happen? And how the heck are boss fights supposed to run?

And yes, I appreciate that a playstyle of "low percentage nuke" might appeal to someone else, but it definitely doesn't appeal to me, nor would I even want that type of character in the party. If my character's most logical tactic in any and all situations is protect the wizard who'll end the encounter? Nah. I love playing martial characters. I even love tanking. But I want to do that as an equal hero. I'm not gonna be there just to facilitate the Win Condition Character.

Blatant Beast

2024-07-15, 10:05 AM

I mean... this entitlement that spells should do everything and be easy with no meaningful costs is also quite insulting while the non-spellcasters are stuck playing a pared down D&D-For-Dummies version of the game.

I do not believe the above quote is what Pex has been talking about. The True Strike spell, for example, in 5e sucks, and because of this, True Strike is hardly used. While True Strike is not officially banned, it is in effect, a soft ban, because it is a waste of an action.

Adding mechanical elements such as taking damage when casting a spell, ala Dark Sun, is something that as a best practice, should probably be mentioned before the first session, as the change is sufficient enough that players may not want to play casters.

Pex, (it seemed to me), was making the point that if a DM is going to add 15 layers of hoops to cast a spell, the DM might as well ban the spell.

Not to kick the hornet's nest here but this has been my point about a certain class of player for some time now. And this is why conventional wisdom for D&D is not always suitable for a lot of tables. You've said it much more eloquently than I have.

Doc, I have every confidence, that you and I can have a productive conversation about this.
I am, however, not at all confident, that you and I can have that conversation here, in public, in the Playground, because I have limited confidence in the moderation standards of this place.

Feel free to private message me, and we can talk about "optimizers".

MrStabby

2024-07-15, 10:06 AM

I don't think it's entitlement about spells doing everything. It's a level of entitlement about a particular class doing what that class is supposed to do.

If a class is sold on flinging fireballs, then its not about expecting that class to heal or teleport, or conjure hordes of animals... its about expecting that class to throw fireballs without being punished for it.

Now sure, you might want a game where people don't throw fireballs... ban the class that does that. Just don't pretend you are in a game that caters for people that want to throw fireballs whilst punishing them for doing that.

Trafalgar

2024-07-15, 10:30 AM

So... do that then? I'm just not really seeing how that's a negative. You can throw in variants like Gritty Rest and Slow Natural Healing while you're at it (DMG 267.)

What I am talking about isn't fixed by gritty realism. I am talking about how common magic is, not how often you get a long rest.

You are off on Dark Sun. The only class Dark Sun eliminated was Paladins, Clerics are very common. That was because 2e Paladins were so tied to having a LG alignment. 5e Paladin options are probably more acceptable.

Nothing in the system prevents you from arcane magic, but the setting motivates you to keeping it under wraps. Kind of like how rogues are motivated to keeping their thieving under wraps. Which is a lot harder for defilers than preservers.

Skrum

2024-07-15, 10:31 AM

If you want to argue classes are too broad in what they can do, that spellcasting within a class is able to do too much then sure. I can get behind that. But spellcasting as a whole?

100% this. Can there be A Spell that can do anything? Totally fine, in principle. But one class can't have access to all or even most spells. That's the balancing point.

I really think people have the wrong idea by trying to balance powerful spells with drawbacks. It sounds all well and good on paper, but in practice, the drawback is either essentially a book keeping afterthought (taking small amounts of damage, for instance) and would rarely change actions taken, or they're debilitating punishments that largely prevent the spell from being used at all (aging the character to uselessness).

Blatant Beast

2024-07-15, 10:53 AM

Wish, I think is a good example of a spell that has a modal option that comes with drawbacks, and a default option that can be used that is still pretty damn good in it's own right.

Honestly, spells like Simulacrum, Wish, Magic Jar, etc...either need to come with drastic drawbacks, or be spells in a special category, call it Rare spells, or Questing Spells, that one can not automatically select upon level up.

It is fine to have options that are more powerful than the norm, but such options should require in game work on the part of the players, in my opinion. This allows DMs to control when the spells appear, and frankly putting in on screen work to acquire a powerful ability feels good as a player.

Psyren

2024-07-15, 11:09 AM

It's not that simple; there's several reasons you might want to avoid rituals even if you seemingly have the time to use one. For starters, some useful buffs themselves only last 10 minutes, like the new Barbarian's Rage or things like Circle of Power, so stopping for a ritual means wasting those resources when there just might be a fight in the next couple of rooms. Even some other rituals, like Detect Magic, only last 10 minutes - so the time you spend waiting to ritual up something else might mean now you need to recast yours and you either end up in a waiting spiral or burning resources to speed things up anyway.

More importantly however, rituals all require concentration to use; if you're the one with the ritual, and you're concentrating on something more important/powerful that lasts an hour or more... even if you have the time to stop for a 10-minute ritual, it might still be a bad idea to actually use one when doing so might mean giving up on your active summon, Enhance Ability, Polymorph, Stoneskin, Invisibility etc.

I'd be fine with some 2-3 round casting time spells coming back, but Fireball should definitely not be one of them. Nor summons - those are already concentration, so you can always hit the caster to end them early even if they already came out.

I have no clue how you'd even begin to balance that. A 10-minute 16d6 slotless 40ft fireball sounds like it would either be completely useless or utterly broken with no in-between.

There is a class built for this concept, Wild Magic Sorcerer. We haven't seen the new table yet, but using it as a starting point for other casting classes that work similarly seems doable.

Guy Lombard-O

2024-07-15, 11:35 AM

My one tenet of magic is: Magic should be fun.

One thing I'd really like to see (and of course, definitely won't) would be a handy section for spellcaster rules and separate spell lists, perhaps in the DMG, for high, mid and low magic settings. As in, you want a low(er) magic setting? Here's the reduced spell list for each class, and the additional required actions/difficulties rules to actually cast them in those settings.

Pex

2024-07-15, 12:06 PM

Sorinth

2024-07-15, 12:10 PM

But it goes beyond high/low magic, want surviving nature to be a theme then you need to change/ban spells like goodberry, create food & water, leomunds tiny hut, etc... Want a Grim Dark world you have to do something about Remove Curse and and probably cure disease. Not too mention there's a big difference between low magic where magic is super rare but a sorcerer can go around throwing fireballs (Think Tim the Enchanter from Monty Python and the Holy Grail) vs low magic like LotR where magic itself is not flashy and it's sometimes hard to say if magic even happened.

A pre-made list just doesn't seem worth it, whereas the DMG explicitly telling DMs when making a campaign world they should look at curating the spell list.

Theodoxus

2024-07-15, 01:11 PM

If the premade list was used as an example - and sure, some folks will take that as gospel truth - but examples are great when you're unsure how to implement a change in theme like that. Sometimes it just takes a spark of inspiration, and other times it takes something a little more concrete than a spark.

Pex

2024-07-15, 03:04 PM

If the main purpose of the spell is to be used out of combat, then fine. That's what rituals are, and they're 10 minutes. If the spell is meant in combat, then no way. I am not sitting there for 20 minutes real world time not playing the game just to cast one spell and the combat might even be over by the time I'm done with it. That was the main reason I hated GURPS magic or at least as it existed way back when in 1989 if they changed it. To cast a fire bolt type spell it was 1d6 damage. If I spend another round of casting it was 2d6. Add another round for 3d6, etc. The target is already dead by the time I have my 3d6 fire damage spell ready to fling, meanwhile I sat there for 30 minutes doing nothing.

I know you acknowledge Fireball should not be that type of spell. I might be violently agreeing with you. I'm talking more about the principle of how a magic system might work. 5E already has minute or longer casting time spells. If someone were to argue a particular spell should take as long and not be an Action to cast that's one thing. If someone were to argue all spells should be like that to balance spellcasters then I rant against it.

Psyren

2024-07-15, 03:08 PM

I'm definitely far more in agreement with you on this than with Korvin, Samurai, or Schwann.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-15, 03:27 PM

Built in damage-scaling for leveled spells would just take away the one clear advantage martials have, that being high damage for low resource expenditure. This would be a bad idea.

I don't think so. When people talk about 3.5, CoDzilla, and the power of Wizards it's not the damage spells they are usually talking about. It's the buff and debuff chains.

Would a T4 spellcaster getting 3? extra d6 on their Fireball be obsoleting martials? I doubt it. 5d8 Chromatic Orb? Same. There is room to have some free scaling, the fact that WotC has stated they are buffing some damage spells is just further confirmation that damage spells on average aren't quite where it would be desirable. Some free scaling built in to the spell helps the spell stay useful at higher levels without making it overwhelming at lower levels.

I think the DMG having suggestions for modified spell lists for certain settings is a solid idea. But it needs to emphasize that such decisions need to be shared with players before/during the character creation process. Not sprung on them when it's time for them to learn the spells.

Theodoxus

2024-07-15, 03:31 PM

I've never played GURPS, the bookkeeping aspect of character creation never appealed to me, but if what you're describing is accurate, that's just... silly. Even if the time/damage scale was a fibonacci sequence, that's still... silly. You could cast your 1d6 spell three times and (hopefully) hit at least twice for 2d6 instead of waiting three rounds to deal 3d6 maybe (either the fight is over, or you miss, more likely, right?)

I'd be ok with a PF2 style sacrifice of other options on your turn to boost damage, but not charging up like Goku round after round... At best, I think some of the bigger blasts (like fireball) should either be tuned back to DMG expectations (6d6 for a 3rd level spell) or made a full round casting time. Certainly not both, definitely not applied to all evocations or other spells with an instantaneous duration - and maybe, as an alternative. Leave it to player choice, on the fly. Fireball can either be cast as an action, dealing 6d6 damage at 3rd level, or cast and launching at the start of your subsequent turn, dealing 8d6 damage at 3rd level.

I'm all about tradeoffs, and boosting damage is one I'm for, provided the reasoning for doing so is sound.

Oh, 10,000%. That should basically be 'homebrew 101'. If you're going to muck with the guts of the system, it's always best to set expectations for both the party AND the DM at the start - and be brave and honest to accept that something that looked good on paper ended up not working as planned. It's ok to scrap something no one is having fun with, even months into a campaign.

Hael

2024-07-15, 03:55 PM

5e made multiple mistakes with spellcasters. They doubled down on the weak damage scaling of 3rd editition, claiming that this was martials schtick. So I mean, not only was that a bad idea to begin with, they failed miserably on that level, where spells like animate objects, summon greater demon and various environmental spells (wall of fire) can be paired into actions that blow away most martial damage. Meanwhile newbies casting spells like lightning bolt are basically losing an action doing nothing.

Which gets to the point. Spellcasting should be fun, varied and vast, and indeed the most powerful single action any character can do. However there has to be large downsides to casting (and there used to be).

What is not ok is the current situation where casters can basically free cast every turn, where they have defenses, movement and stat block boosting buffs that rival and exceed most martials, where they have so many slots they are never taxed for resources and where they have almost no downsides. ALl the while being able to bend reality in a thousand ways and being pure utility in almost every circ*mstance.

We used to make casters glass cannons. We used to make spells hard and expensive to find. We used to have casting times, and interuptions. We used to have fewer limited resources to cast and spell opposition schools (implying you had to make choices on what you could be good at). There used to be different xp rates, and various horrible consequences to spells (the 1 yr haste aging for instance)

JNAProductions

2024-07-15, 03:57 PM

Spellcasting should be fun, varied and vast, and indeed the most powerful single action any character can do. However there has to be large downsides to casting (and there used to be).

Why?

If that's your preference, that's totally fine. I won't knock your fun.
But the way the whole post is written, it's really coming off as you saying it's how it SHOULD be, for most everyone.

I disagree. Some magic should be world-altering and risky as hell. But not all of it-and I certainly don't want it to turn the game into "The casters do the important bits while being protected by the other players who can't do anything besides that."

Psyren

2024-07-15, 04:05 PM

I don't think so. When people talk about 3.5, CoDzilla, and the power of Wizards it's not the damage spells they are usually talking about. It's the buff and debuff chains.

3.5 CoDzilla is irrelevant here, that was already solved by 5e Concentration and the removal of iterative attacks from non-martials.

Would a T4 spellcaster getting 3? extra d6 on their Fireball be obsoleting martials? I doubt it. 5d8 Chromatic Orb? Same.

If that free scaling was all they got, probably not, but then the spells would suck. If they could still scale up with spell slot level on top of the free scaling, you get overtuned fast.

There is room to have some free scaling, the fact that WotC has stated they are buffing some damage spells is just further confirmation that damage spells on average aren't quite where it would be desirable.

Except that's not free scaling, that's just buffing the base spell to where it should be for its level. A buffed Flame Strike still costs a 5th-level slot for instance; A free-scaling Fireball would only still cost a 3rd.

Theodoxus

2024-07-15, 04:22 PM

Ah, the morphic hate against 4th edition; the everything wrong because 4E tried and failed at it first.

This time it's because when everything from spells to weapon attacks behaves the same, there's no way to know if you're a Fighter or a Wizard or a Fighting Wizard.

So, 4E could have been great if what, spell casters were built like 5E and martials stayed the way they were in 4E?

I think the reason 4E actually failed is because it was built on a completely new chassis that took a while to get used to, AND that spell casters didn't act or feel like spell casters. But the general premise works in lots of games. They're just not TTRPGs.

Spells in D&D are definitely too easy. Outside of a handfull, they're just cantrips that happen to have limited uses per day. You want to talk about boring? Using cantrips for everything - see Warlock.

It's like the other thread, talking about the evolution of the game. Spells have 'evolved' to the point where they do one specific thing, every time. Each spell is a dedicated piece of code that has next to no malliability or flare. A firebolt is going to zip out to 120' and catch something on fire. A hypnotic pattern is going to pop out and dazzle folks. A wall of force is going to staunchly, nay, stoicly sit there and block all the things. They're like the terminator - that's all they do.

And people have tried, lord knows they've tried, to create something different, something new, something wow with spells, with magic, with psionics. And they get rejected because it doesn't feel like D&D. I don't envy the devs. Hael is right - we're on track of seeing 6E roll out far closer to the AEDU world of 4th edition, and spells will be even closer to the way they work in FPS games and late stage MMORPGs. I'm a little surprised it hasn't happened yet with mana pools that allow for nigh constant casting of spells; no downtime, no need to rest. Just pick a specialization and pew pew all the things.

As the old pre-computer guard die, the new hotness will look more and more like Everquest or Diablo 1. Nostalgia will be from the folks who were pre-teens when those games came out, who saw their dads or older brothers playing them and want to emulate their roleplaying around abilities like that. It's our future. Mark my words.

stoutstien

2024-07-15, 04:25 PM

The vast majority of players aren't purposely looking to challenge themselves via self governed restrictions so casting (full anyways. Half or lower progress tend to have enough attrition factors to keep it enjoyable) isn't meant to be hard to manage or preform.

This doesn't leave a lot of room for those who want both the breath of option that spell casting has and the challenge of managing it unless the whole table/group is ok with cranking up everything by 5x-10x that baseline.

Should there be more optional rules for making spell casting more engaging? Sure and maybe the new DMG will surprise me.

grarrrg

2024-07-15, 04:41 PM

I get the feeling your opinion (and some others...) is less "I hate 5e" and a bit more "everything 3rd and after sucks".

GeneralVryth

2024-07-15, 04:43 PM

We used to have dial up internet. We used to have significantly higher rates of disease. We used to not be able to chat like this on a globally accessible website. We used to not have cool D&D video games. D&D used to not be nearly as popular.

Just because something used to be true doesn't mean it was good.

And plenty of people liked 4e (though I was not one of them).

The constant martial versus caster debate is tiring. Especially since it tends to conflate chosen role/effect and power source. In D&D there is 2 major power sources Skill and Magic (Magic could be broken down in to Arcane, Divine, and Primal), and in some settings Technology. There are a variety of possible roles, but at a high level there is the traditional 3, Tank, Damage, and Support.

In the power sources category, Skill is never going to be able to support the same breadth of roles/effects as Magic. It can't without breaking verisimilitude or significantly scaling back what Magic can do or its ease of use. And large enough chunks of the player like the verisimilitude and using magic that you aren't going to change those requirements.

Thankfully the balance of the power sources don't matter. What matters is the balance of effects/roles in play. If an arcane magic user wants to devote most of their resources to "Tanking" and doing melee damage, there is no reason they should be any worse (or better) at it than a skill based fighter. Both are contributing in their desired fashion. Now is there room to improve the balance in 5e14 here? Yes, absolutely. Does 5e24 make progress in this area? Also, yes. Will be enough? I don't know. Magic is always going to inherently be more flexible than skill, because it's not constrained by realism. That benefit is hard to quantify since its usage will vary greatly between players and DMs. So drawbacks to account for it will almost never be on mark. The better solution is more magic items for Skill based characters once there starts to be a notable difference.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-15, 05:10 PM

If that free scaling was all they got, probably not, but then the spells would suck. If they could still scale up with spell slot level on top of the free scaling, you get overtuned fast.

Let's use an example.

Fireball. 3rd level spell. Same area and description. Damage becomes 4d6 + [Prof]d6 fire damage. Can be upcast at 2d6 per spell level above 3rd.

When you get it at level 5, you do 7d6 damage (a nerf over the 5e14 version).

At level 9 the base damage with a 3rd level slot becomes 8d6, and the max possible with a 5th level slot is 12d6. Purely damage, no riders. The 8d6 is obviously no better than 5e14, and 12d6 only damage is not that much (avg 42 fire damage), and you only have 1 such slot. Compare that with Summon Draconic Spirit or Synpatic Static or any of several other 5th level uses.

Let's fast forward to 17. Base damage with a 3rd level slot is now 10d6. Max possible is 22d6 with a 9th level slot, but no one is using a 9th level slot for Fireball. Really any slot 6+ is probably only getting used for spells in that range, likely concentration spells or longer lasting buffs. You only get 4 such slots, maxing out at 6 at 20, so you can only afford 1 or 2 per combat. Which means its your lower level slots doing the damage. So with a 5th level slot, we are talking 14d6 over the 10d6 of the 3rd level slot. 14d6 averages at 49 fire damage. Is that OP compared to martials (versus the 10d6 it would have been)? My instinct says no. With 5e14 the rider on a damage spell matters as much as the damage, and I don't think 5e24 is going to change that.

But here is the real point of note.

If Chromatic Orb and Shatter's damage is changed to: 2d8 + [prof/2 round up]d8

How do those compare with Shield or Misty when competing for 1st and 2nd level slots at levels 5 through 10? When your 3rd+ slots are still limited a little more bang out of your 1st and 2nd level slots makes it harder to just burn them on the "good" spells like Shield and Misty Step.

Theodoxus

2024-07-15, 05:21 PM

I use a fourth power source: Occult/Psionics. It's the catch-all for what you're putting Skill into. It's not particularly elegant as a name, certainly not like Arcane, Divine, and Primal evoke definite feelings about what they mean.

I do take a little bit of exception regarding 'constrained by realism'. I personally think that's a cop-out too. You're talking about completely different, alien, even, species from humans. And the humans that comprise adventuring classes are equally alien to our real life humans. I get it's hard to wrap ones head around swinging a sword so fast as to heat up air molecules and fire off a fireball at someone (to beat the dead horse that is the Book of 9 Swords). But if you look at these characters are more than human, it doesn't break verisimilitude to allow it. Heck, a good nights rest is more powerful than nearly all the healing at a Clerics disposal. Certainly any single spell under 9th level.

D&D is about fantasy beings, yes, even the boring old humans that are so familiar. Fantasy beings should be fantastical. I think the traditions where magic is basically a short cut for doing something mundane is the best approach. Then, the fantasy that is D&D allows the mundane to be done by adventurers to likewise have a short cut.

It also nicely bypasses the whole 'guy at a gym' problem. Everyone doesn't need to be a demigod Hercules wanna-be, but maybe they should? It fits just a little better with the story being told.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-15, 05:42 PM

It also nicely bypasses the whole 'guy at a gym' problem. Everyone doesn't need to be a demigod Hercules wanna-be, but maybe they should? It fits just a little better with the story being told.

I agree Psionic should be another source, not that it should replace Skill.

It's not a cop out at all. Some people want to play a character that is not magical. That's fine, it's like choosing to play a Batman-esque character in a superhero game. It's an interesting archetype. But in choosing that you are choosing to take on the associated drawbacks. You don't get to complain you can't throw fireballs when you chose something that means you can't.

What bothers me is the effort to push the ability for a nonmagical character to do magical things just because he is Uber-skilled Awesome McMan. You can either do Arcane/Divine/Primal/Psionic things or you can be non-magical. You don't get both. Trying to push both is verisimilitude breaking.

Rafaelfras

2024-07-15, 05:48 PM

Let's use an example.

Fireball. 3rd level spell. Same area and description. Damage becomes 4d6 + [Prof]d6 fire damage. Can be upcast at 2d6 per spell level above 3rd.

When you get it at level 5, you do 7d6 damage (a nerf over the 5e14 version).

But here is the real point of note.

If Chromatic Orb and Shatter's damage is changed to: 2d8 + [prof/2 round up]d8

Dr.Samurai

2024-07-15, 06:48 PM

Pex, (it seemed to me), was making the point that if a DM is going to add 15 layers of hoops to cast a spell, the DM might as well ban the spell.

Now other challenges, are probably acceptable to spring on players. A game world that has a scarcity of diamonds for example, might make it more difficult to cast certain spells, but I do not think such a world building detail reaches the level of severity that it makes any particular class unplayable.
I think I quoted the wrong line. I meant to respond to the comment about what the game "is saying I should be able to do", and the sentiment that because it's the way the game is right now, we shouldn't discuss how to change it.

I'm definitely not in favor of making spellcasting so awful to use that no one would use it, but I also think that's sort of a strawman. I don't think anyone is saying that spellcasting should be so punitive it ceases to be an option.

For me, the costs come more in restricting what spells can do in the first place. So it's less "when you cast x spell, y bad thing happens to you" and more like "spells won't allow you to do x,y,z until higher levels, and even then there might be a significant component, etc."

Feel free to private message me, and we can talk about "optimizers".
I agree. But also I thought I was agreeing with you, so I guess you don't think your comment applies to other player groups it seems. I'll DM you.

I don't think it's entitlement about spells doing everything. It's a level of entitlement about a particular class doing what that class is supposed to do.

If you want to argue classes are too broad in what they can do, that spellcasting within a class is able to do too much then sure. I can get behind that. But spellcasting as a whole? Nah, that's cool with me still. I would love to have more specialist casters that can't do everything but that shouldn't be about not having fun spells in the game or punishing them out of use, but about having those classes not have everything.
I love having spellcasters in the game; I don't hate magic or anything. So there's no intention here to make it unworkable. I think you're exactly right in guessing that the issue is the breadth of things they can do that seems too much.

Wish, I think is a good example of a spell that has a modal option that comes with drawbacks, and a default option that can be used that is still pretty damn good in it's own right.

I've mentioned it before but my issue is that spellcasters are simply privileged in resources and action economy in the game and there's no reason for it to be that way. Ok, you cast Planar Binding. Now you have this whole other character you can control for multiple encounters (or even multiple months) that can act independently in combat. Can my fighter have a cohort? A squire? Something similar? Or you cast a Summon spell so now you can make multiple attack actions as a bonus action for hopefully multiple encounters a day. Okay, can I have a mount that can survive combat and attack with my bonus action?

You can make a dozen attacks with Animate Objects for an entire minute. Can my warrior do the same with a longbow? With a spear? No? They just always get to make two attacks forever?

This is hardly exhaustive but the point is that one half of the game is severely limited in imagination and what it can do, while the other gets the lion share of features and abilities. If you change martials to match spellcasters, you have a very different game that has much more powerful parties. So it seems to me you either change the game, or pare down all the nonsense that casters can currently do.

Put the blame where the blame belongs - on the spell itself. Change the spell or get rid of it entirely. Do whatever you have to do to make that spell work for the game, but once you're satisfied with how the spell works don't punish the player to regret he casts it when you say he can cast it. No hit point loss, no insanity risk, no loss of turns. The only thing he 'loses' is whatever the resource spent to cast it - the spell slot in D&D's case or mana points. If you want the spell to be niche an expensive material cost is needed so that the spell in not cast every day at any time just because the player wants to is also fine, but it's not ok the PC is unconscious or can't cast spells for a game month so the player doesn't get to play the game or forced to play another character for the next few qame sessions. I was biased disappointed 5E Heroes' Feast was given an expensive component I could not longer cast it every day as I did in 3E, but I understand why it was deemed needing a limitation and now the spell is cast when it's really important to be needed instead of treating it like a box of Wheaties. It's not punishing.
Agreed. But the other cost has to be opportunity cost for doing other things. So it's not just an expensive diamond needed to cast the spell, but also if I go the spellcaster route, heavier armors are not easy to come by or cast in, my armor class will be limited, my ability to engage in melee combat will be limited, etc. We're quickly approaching a game where everyone is going to be a gish. I mean... it practically is that already, except we've got some of us still playing martials listening to everyone brag about how much better casters are because they can do everything and they can do it better.

By over simplifying things, we are now in danger of killing the fantasy to begin with and its not like we havent been down that road before (4e basically hom*ogenized everything to death, and everyone hated it).
Speak for yourself lol, I didn't and don't hate 4E. And maybe if 4E didn't get it right, it doesn't mean it's all bad. A lot of the solutions that people put forth for 5E issues were done in 4E.

Psyren

2024-07-15, 07:01 PM

Let's use an example.

...

So with a 5th level slot, we are talking 14d6 over the 10d6 of the 3rd level slot. 14d6 averages at 49 fire damage. Is that OP compared to martials (versus the 10d6 it would have been)? My instinct says no.

Okay - now how will you modify all the rest of them? From the same 5th-level slot, Cone of Cold is 8d8 per target, Steel Wind Strike is 6d10, Destructive Wave is 10d6, Flame Strike and Synaptic Static are 8d6 (undertuned, but still)... If you don't rebalance all of them too, why would I ever waste a preparation on any of them when the Fireball I picked up 12 levels ago is giving me 14d6 at their level? And if you do decide to do that, how much design and testing time are we talking to make them worth learning? And that's just 5th-level spells - If Fireball lets me blast for 16d6 at 6th level, what should I do to Chain Lightning, Freezing Sphere, Harm and Circle of Death to get them balanced too? And so on.

But here is the real point of note.

If Chromatic Orb and Shatter's damage is changed to: 2d8 + [prof/2 round up]d8

When I'm low level and Shatter / Chromatic Orb are among my most damaging spells, I'm not going to be burning a lot of slots on Shield and Misty Step. I won't have to - most enemies will only be hitting once, and things like teleportation to escape or reposition won't be as necessary because fewer enemies will have things like reach tentacles that I'll need to desperately get out of. And at higher levels when those threats start to come online more and the lower level slots' damage is falling off, I'm perfectly okay with lower-level slots shifting more towards utility and defense as the game goes on.

I see what you're after and I don't hate the basic idea, but you've just introduced a bunch of moving parts and a rebalancing need into every blasting spell in the game that you care about staying relevant. I'd rather just have an expected damage level for on-level blasting and upcast blasting without these kinds of variables/scaling muddying the waters. To say nothing of players now needing to look up their proficiency bonus and do more math on top of the math the spell already calls for (i.e. figuring out how many dice I'm even supposed to be rolling before figuring out how much damage I just did, and oh yeah I have subclass boosts like Draconic Sorcerer or Evoker Wizard or Tempest Cleric on top of that.)

GeneralVryth

2024-07-15, 07:05 PM

You can make a dozen attacks with Animate Objects for an entire minute. Can my warrior do the same with a longbow? With a spear? No? They just always get to make two attacks forever?

I am all for powerful steeds and a squire/cohort for martials. I am also in the camp that some spells are too powerful. Simulacrum being arguably the worst offender.

Anyways, it's more 2/3 or 3/4 of the game is caster or magical in some respect, and that percentage goes up once you start counting subclasses. And the solution of course is to bring non-magical characters up some, while nerfing some aspects of magic. And guess what is happening in 5e24....

It may not be to the degree you are talking about, but it is happening.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-15, 07:22 PM

It's not that hard.
1st and 2nd level damage spells lose a die and scale off [prof/2]
3rd through 5th level damage spells lose 2 to 4 dice and scale off prof
6th through 8th level damage spells lost 4 to 8 dice and scale of prof*2
Damage spell upcasts in general just need to be doubled/tripled.

And that is just with my off the cuff crude example with existing spells.

What I would prefer, and have stated in other threads is overhauling upcasting so just about every spell has the option, and it does more. Removing spells that are more or less the enhanced version of a lower level spell that is upcast. Then you can combine that with features that provide free upcssting in some situations removing a lot of overlapping features in the process. The Dracoinc Sorcerer bonus becoming just a free 1 level upcast on your fire damage spells. Evokers can be 1 free 1 level upcast on all evocation spells (you can do somethign similar with all of the Wizard schools as a standard feature). Maybe Full casters get a feature at level 11 or 12 that provides a free 1 level upcast to all level 1 spells, upgrading to level 2 and then level 3 spells at higher class levels.

With the above you don't need the prof scaling I suggested earlier, it's all built into the upcasting system and relevant classes.

Slipjig

2024-07-15, 07:35 PM

100% this. Can there be A Spell that can do anything? Totally fine, in principle. But one class can't have access to all or even most spells. That's the balancing point.

I really like systems that limit how many spells a character can learn, especially if they need to be thematically related. I think my favorite example is SotDL. There's a ton of schools, but each school has a relatively small number of spells (~10, IIRC). You learn new spells at level-up, and you can choose to unlock a new school instead of picking a new spell. So you CAN go broad, but you'll have a much smaller list of spells than a character that sticks to their initial schools.

It also helps address the "Wizards don't have a class identity" issue, because your school choices say a lot about your character. We had two Wizards in the party, but the one who specialized in Curses and Divination was VERY distinct (both in personality and playstyle) from the one who took in Artifice and Protection.

I think D&D would benefit from something like this. It really doesn't make any sense that Clerics of Umberlee and Clerics of Torm have a 99% overlap on their spell lists.

Psyren

2024-07-15, 07:38 PM

With the above you don't need the prof scaling I suggested earlier, it's all built into the upcasting system and relevant classes.

I'd much prefer every blasting spell having improved upcasting than muddying things with autoscaling leveled spells. But that seems to be what they're doing anyway (see the new Smite spells.)

And that is just with my off the cuff crude example with existing spells.

Those are some... sizeable ranges for "not that hard." But, best of luck to you.

Which games do you mean? ARPGs? JRPGs? MMOs? Because the expectations for those games are very different too.

When I sit down to play Diablo or WoW, it's true that the Warriors and the Mages are (generally) equally good at things like single-target damage, AoE damage, crossing a battlefield in an instant, and so on. But those games only have a combat pillar - there's no exploration outside of heading to the next quest marker, and no social interaction outside of right-clicking on each NPC with a ❗ above their head. I don't need a character who's good at charming people or reading thoughts or uncovering secret information in those games; even for the rare occasion where I need to do a basic noncombat challenge like sneaking past some guards, they'll typically just have an NPC turn me invisible or something. My own non-combat abilities don't matter, if I even have any. That's an experience I don't go to TTRPGs to replicate.

Boring? Odd then that Warlocks are consistently one of the most popular classes in the game, and among the casters, routinely beat all of them save Wizard. Seems to me that most people (who want to play casters) actually find them fun.

I don't think "people get rejected" is exactly fair. Alternate casting systems exist, they just haven't taken off even among the folks who want that because they're not getting promoted anywhere. That's more basic obscurity than active rejection I'd say; be the change you want to see, etc.

Hael is right - we're on track of seeing 6E roll out far closer to the AEDU world of 4th edition, and spells will be even closer to the way they work in FPS games and late stage MMORPGs. I'm a little surprised it hasn't happened yet with mana pools that allow for nigh constant casting of spells; no downtime, no need to rest. Just pick a specialization and pew pew all the things.

*guffaws in Baldurs Gate 3*

There's plenty of demand even among total newcomers to the hobby coming in from videogameland for what 5e is selling. RPGs are a dime a dozen, but RPGs where you can interact with all three pillars are much rarer. D&D offers that, and the demand for that is not going to just die off.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-15, 08:31 PM

I'd much prefer every blasting spell having improved upcasting than muddying things with autoscaling leveled spells. But that seems to be what they're doing anyway (see the new Smite spells.)

I am not sure what you mean, it seems like they all have the standard 1 die of damage on upcast and that's it. What I was describing was a much more involved overhaul and some free upcasting as a kind of scaling as well. In fact it seems WotC is going in the opposite direction of what I was talking about considering they boast about the number of spells in the new PHB. One of the advantages of what I was talking about is reducing the number of spells, which means you can reduce the number prepared/known as well.

Essentially turning spells in to something in between the Disciplines from the v3 Mystic from 2017, and spells as they are now.

Skrum

2024-07-15, 08:36 PM

I agree to a point, but I think class balance is no more or less important than the narrative. This is a game, and I don't think it would be improved by having defined "Super Cool, Powerful Guy" (the casters) and "Kinda Schmucky, Normal Guy" (the martials). Especially if, as it stands right now, the game doesn't tell the player they're kinda picking the latter.

Boromir and Harry Potter can adventure together, power-wise. That works. But if Harry Potter becomes Voldemort (power-wise) and then eventually Elminster or Vecna, but Boromir stays Boromir, there's gonna be a problem of who's doing what and who actually matters.

I think the answer is for the game to have explicit levels that correspond to certain game types. Like if you want to play a lower magic game, gritty survival, horror, or "realistic," there should be advice to stop leveling at 5. If the game is high/classic fantasy or steampunk, levels 4-10 are most appropriate. And if you want to play fantasy superhero, well that starts at level 11.

And then classes - all classes - should be built accordingly. The paladin can't cure diseases by touch until level 6 because that's a world-breaking power before 6. Ditto for remove curse, lessor restoration, create food and drink, goodberry, etc.; anything that'll trivialize the grounded, gritty game that gets played for levels 1-5. Conversely, there's no Boromir in superhero fantasy. The superhero version of Boromir is Yujiro Hanma, or Obi Wan. Insisting that Boromir still exists at level 14 has held back the game since 3rd.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-15, 08:52 PM

This will have multi-classing issues. Thankfully there is another way....

How does Tony Stark (a "normal" human) compete with Dr. Strange (A fairly powerful wizard)? The answer is the same as your Boromir dillema. Toys. Magic items in D&D parlance. Specifically magic items with pre-reqs of being a high level martial or not having access to spell slots of level X. Also, attunement capacity should be something like 6 - [the highest level spell slot you have/2] or maybe /3. But you get the idea.

Pex

2024-07-15, 09:22 PM

Agreed. But the other cost has to be opportunity cost for doing other things. So it's not just an expensive diamond needed to cast the spell, but also if I go the spellcaster route, heavier armors are not easy to come by or cast in, my armor class will be limited, my ability to engage in melee combat will be limited, etc. We're quickly approaching a game where everyone is going to be a gish. I mean... it practically is that already, except we've got some of us still playing martials listening to everyone brag about how much better casters are because they can do everything and they can do it better.

Yeah, they have it way too good.

Speak for yourself lol, I didn't and don't hate 4E. And maybe if 4E didn't get it right, it doesn't mean it's all bad. A lot of the solutions that people put forth for 5E issues were done in 4E.

Certainly. I'm not advocating no limitations whatsoever after all. No character/class should be the best at everything. When I play my paladin I'm up front, taking point, get in the bad guys' faces. When I play my sorcerer I keep my squishy character in the back hiding behind things for cover flinging spells. My only gripe is if my character is supposed to be casting spells then let him cast spells, not make me think twice about casting because I'll hurt myself.

Another example. Many years ago I played a Star Wars game where to use Force abilities you literally lost hit points to pay for it. I couldn't play the Jedi I wanted because bad guys were hurting me. I was hurting me. I might as well not do anything just hide. Even the DM saw the problem. His solution was to house rule give me max hit points everyone else and monsters get average hit points as usual. This allowed me some buffer to use the Force and be a Jedi without dying in Round 2 because I moved an object or told the bad guy my friend wasn't the droid he was looking for. How dare Jedi do such things, right? Pay your hit points and die for the audacity!

Also, 4E did have some good ideas. It was still a bad game and 5E did them better.

Psyren

2024-07-15, 09:38 PM

I am not sure what you mean, it seems like they all have the standard 1 die of damage on upcast and that's it.

The ones with riders do (other than Vanilla smite), because they do more than damage. But check the raw damage one, Searing Smite, which has double scaling (initial and ongoing.)

Skrum

2024-07-15, 10:13 PM

This will have multi-classing issues. Thankfully there is another way....

Maybe? I'm not imagining like a hard transition for one thing; new powers can be introduced over the first few levels of a "block" to bring a character up to speed. But really, the idea is there's nothing breaking BELOW a certain level. Like no one will be able to just handwave finding shelter (tiny hut) or teleport more than a few feet (dimension door) until they are in the appropriate power block.

And honestly, I'm entirely Ok with someone making bad build choices and delaying getting powers that they really need. If someone does a 3/2/2 build and isn't keeping up with the rest of the party...that's kinda on them.

This is just don't understand the point of. You're saying the game should be intentionally made so that fighters flat-out need the DM to give them equipment so they can keep up, and further more, the items they need are like "soul-locked" and only usable by someone who can't cast spells? Why even do that?? Just give them class features!

clash

2024-07-15, 10:55 PM

This will have multi-classing issues. Thankfully there is another way....
How does Tony Stark (a "normal" human) compete with Dr. Strange (A fairly powerful wizard)? The answer is the same as your Boromir dillema. Toys. Magic items in D&D parlance. Specifically magic items with pre-reqs of being a high level martial or not having access to spell slots of level X. Also, attunement capacity should be something like 6 - [the highest level spell slot you have/2] or maybe /3. But you get the idea.

The difference is Tony Starks class isn't ordinary human who happens to find a bunch of magic item. Tony Stark is an artificer who's entire class abilities provide level appropriate items that he can pick and build as class abilities separate from the ones everyone can find and have. People don't seem to like that as the answer for some reason.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-16, 12:24 AM

The system already kind of does that though. Long duration resurrection is level 9+, same with petrifaction cures, curses are level 5+. I think to do what you are talking about is just pushing a handful of spells to higher levels.

I am saying the solution to a character that wants to be explicitly non-magical, but also have magical effects and keep up so to speak with magic users is to give them magic items. I guess another version would be blessings or boons from powerful entities. But you can't claim to be purely non-magical and produce magical effects, it's a verisimilitude breaking contradiction. And none of that has anything to do with roles in combat or out, or is only connected to balance by the range of possibilities.

In essence it sounds to me like you want your non-magical warrior to cast fireball or produce an equivalent effect. I am saying that's dumb, but the warrior doesn't need to be able to do that to be an effective contributor to the party. And if they really want that fireball effect they should get a sword of fireball slinging, or maybe as a friendly deity to grant them such an ability (having a system to do this under player control would be helpful, but it's not required).

You mean you and one other person who has responded? It's fine if you don't like that solution, you are free to suggest others. But you won't find a receptive audience to giving magical abilities to something non-magical and stating it's still non-magical.

Schwann145

2024-07-16, 01:45 AM

I know they do, hence the "localized phenomena" I wrote about it my post. Those should be variant mechanics that kick in when you interact with those dangerous areas/aspects of those settings, not baseline parts of the setting-agnostic magic rules.
I'm not talking about "localized phenomena" like Wild Magic zones or the like.
I'm saying that, in the lore of near every printed D&D Campaign Setting, the very act of casting spells can be dangerous and difficult for the spellcaster. There are hundreds of novels and various setting splatbooks where you can see this.
Raistlin's issues were already somewhat described earlier in the discussion, for example.

Pex, (it seemed to me), was making the point that if a DM is going to add 15 layers of hoops to cast a spell, the DM might as well ban the spell.
But who said anything about 15 layers? Do we really need to "slippery slope" the topic already?
Just off the top of my head, what if Haste caused a temporary level of fatigue after it's effects wore off, similar in theme to how it works in BG3? What if Lightning Bolt went back to bouncing (which makes it less predictable, but not necessarily worse; it could be better!), etc.
Heck, look at Fireball even in 5e: It has friendly-fire issues and destroys mundane objects, which sometimes you don't want to destroy. These are drawbacks to using the spell, and no one is crying foul that it's ruining the game for the caster that picks fireball!
No one is suggesting that spells should be so bad to the caster that the whole shebang isn't worth the effort and they will be happier rolling something else.

I don't think it's entitlement about spells doing everything. It's a level of entitlement about a particular class doing what that class is supposed to do.
What that class is supposed to do?
Spellcasting classes are supposed to cast spells, with the caveat of doing so in their own "unique" (I use that term loosely in 5e mechanics...) way to differentiate between different spellcasting classes.
Nothing says those spells have to be easy to cast, or totally safe to cast.
You might as well say, "a class is supposed to win fights and save the day, so how dare the DM provide the possibility of loss?"

Why?
Simply put, because there needs to be a better answer than currently exists to the disparity in power/ability between casters and non-casters.
I don't think anyone disputes that casters are all around better off than non-casters, even in 5e where spells are at their historically weakest.
Making spellcasting less of a "fire-and-forget, sure thing," can go a long way toward balancing those scales, without just nerfing spells into feeling weak and pathetic and hardly any different than a sword swing (the way 4e did it).

Blatant Beast

2024-07-16, 07:14 AM

But who said anything about 15 layers? Do we really need to "slippery slope" the topic already?

Essentially, you are advocating for a design ethos of making spells slightly crappy for martial 'balance'. I do not think that is a good idea, be it one layer of crappiness or fifteen.

The idea of 2024 D&D going through all the spells and abilities and tweaking the action cost/effect to make things be more synergistic is good goal, in my opinion.

If you want to make spellcasting less reliable, you can have spellcasting trigger Opportunity Attacks and force Concentration checks to complete a spell, even if the spell is Instantaneous.

Trying to make each individual spell a little more crappy, strikes me as inefficient, when you can make some general rules changes, to achieve your goal of balance.

Note, I do not think 2024 D&D is going this route, but it would be easy to homebrew some solutions.

Kane0

2024-07-16, 07:37 AM

If you want to make spellcasting less reliable, you can have spellcasting trigger Opportunity Attacks and force Concentration checks to complete a spell, even if the spell is Instantaneous.

That would also affect explicitly melee/touch spells like shocking grasp and vampiric touch, as well as defensive, healing and buff spells from blade ward and cure wounds all the way up to invulnerability and glibness.
Ranged spell attacks already suffer from disadvantage when used in melee, but ranged spell attacks are mostly only present in spells you get in tier 1.
Save spells I think might be the ones you would want to make a blanket rule for. Perhaps provide advantage to the creatures making saves while in melee with the caster? Hmm but then again you have stuff like poison spray...

Blatant Beast

2024-07-16, 08:28 AM

I'm not saying I want that, but for those that want to make successful spellcasting less likely, I think systemic changes are the best way to go, as opposed to making all spells a little bit worse. If some eggs are broken, well...it seems breaking eggs, is the intent, for some.

Spells with Saving Throws already get hosed by Legendary Resistance.

In D&D now the Wish spell is pretty common at high levels. In 2024 D&D, almost all casters will have access to Wish. All the Arcane Casters will take it, (Bards will have Magical Secrets, Warlocks might be left out), Clerics will have Wish through Divine Intervention.

Are Martial Epic Feats really going to be balanced with Wish?
Should Martial PCs be able to kill creatures outright on a hit a few times a day?

How do you create a weapon based feature, that is comparable in power level to Wish?
(Somebody, needs to ask Mr. Owl)

Theodoxus

2024-07-16, 08:53 AM

How do you create a weapon based feature, that is comparable in power level to Wish?
(Somebody, needs to ask Mr. Owl)

Sword of three wishes?

I still find it kind of funny that folks don't want guy at the gym to be able to even create a spark that could light their cigarette, but are hunky-dory with all the magitech in the world turning them into Iron Man or even Dr. Strange.

"Nah man, I'm not magical at all, it's all this cool gear someone else magically created for me. I mean, can you imagine, you have the magical secrets of the universe on lock, and you decide to use some of that power on making me more better? I mean, I'm not even gonna try to take in some of that magic training shizzle. Heck, I don't even believe in magic, like, at the metaphysical level, you dig? But hoowee, if this magicified plate mail and warhammer of wishes ain't the bitchinest!"

Talk about breaking verisimilitude. "I don't want to use magic, just hit things with a sword" doesn't really mesh with "ooh, magic sword, and magic armor, and magic cube, and magic helm of telepathy, and magic gauntlets of hitting harder, and magic shoes of teleportation!" Just because you're pushing the magic off onto gear that someone who uses magic made, doesn't mean you're not using magic... Reminds me of a time in 3.5 where someone playing a Paladin took the Vow of Poverty, and then as soon as a magic sword appeared in a chest, he wanted to keep it - and the vow... I was like no, play by the rules. He quit.

Skrum

2024-07-16, 09:19 AM

No, I don't specifically want fighters to cast fireball. Or any other particular spell-like effect (I'm open to a Swordsage subclass, certainly! But that's not what I'm talking about).

I'm talking about the obvious contradiction of insisting Boromir adventure beside Elminster, like they are roughly equal in power and thus contribution. If someone wants to play low magic and have No Magic Guy, that's fine and possible. But that rough level of power should apply to *all characters in the group.* The Marvel movies can have Black Widow fight beside Thor because it's a movie. In a TTRPG, that power differential is really disruptive to the game.

See Also

Best Delivery App to Work for in Canada

The obvious answer, to me, is to have tiers of play. Up to level X all classes fall in this power scheme and are intended to be played in this type of game world, go above that and now they have this other set of powers and the type of game they play in is different.

Fighters and rogues, the two classes most tied to "skill, not magic," like what do they look like in a Fantasy Superhero world? Well they still don't cast fireball. But they possess physical attributes that make them superheroes (impossible toughness, impossible speed, strength, etc etc etc). They have training that lets them perform impossible feats. A presence that can cow an army with a glance. Fiction is full of these characters.

JellyPooga

2024-07-16, 09:26 AM

Sword of three wishes?

That's a lot of words to try and describe the perfectly acceptable concept of a character entirely focused on the perfection of themselves, body and mind, over magical training or study. And who better to utilise the best magical equipment that someone devoted to its creation than someone that didn't "waste" their focus on being mediocre at something that someone else has dedicated a lifetime to?

I don't know one sot about how to make a fridge or a kitchen range, but as a chef I'll make you better food than most people that do. Your criticism of the mundane character willing to utilise magic without understanding it is misplaced IMO and fails to accomodate the very basic principle that specialisation is superior to generalisation.

Theodoxus

2024-07-16, 09:27 AM

Archangel vs BMX Rider... which character is in the wrong? Does Archangel need to just only use cantrips and never his divine might, or does BMX Rider need to strap a couple AR-15s to his handlebars and have a kickbag full of grenades he can drop at will?

If your table has a guy who never wants to deal with magic force everyone else to play at his level? Who decides how many people get to be sad? One anti-magic dude because he's outclassed by folks wanting to play powerful classes, or the rest of the table toning down their power to make little man happy?

Personally, I've never wanted to play a fantasy game as myself. I play myself 24/7, I'd like a little make believe where I'm not a 52 year old accountant. Healing folks or throwing fireballs sounds much more fun.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-16, 09:31 AM

Sword of three wishes?

Do you really not understand the contradiction? Or do you just not care, and so are trying to misconstrue it as something silly?

The point is to have a world that makes sense as much as possible within the confines of the game. Which means in a world that follows the physical laws of our world, expect where specified otherwise, non-magical effects need to be plausible.

It's a RP issue, not a game/balance issue, though it can have balance implications because of the constraints. But there is a pretty simple solution, if you don't like those constraints you don't need to wear them. A super majority of classes have magical/supernatural abilities. And even among the ones that don't have them in core, usually have some subclass options that grant them. But if you want to play something that explicitly mundane, then you get to live with the consequences. And there are still ways around that.

Psyren

2024-07-16, 09:56 AM

I'm not talking about "localized phenomena" like Wild Magic zones or the like.
I'm saying that, in the lore of near every printed D&D Campaign Setting, the very act of casting spells can be dangerous and difficult for the spellcaster. There are hundreds of novels and various setting splatbooks where you can see this.
Raistlin's issues were already somewhat described earlier in the discussion, for example.

This is a terrible example; Raistlin's issues are very unique to him, not due to spellcasting being innately risky on Krynn. He would be better represented by a custom curse than by new magic rules for everyone. He's the very definition of a localized phenomenon.

Simply put, because there needs to be a better answer than currently exists to the disparity in power/ability between casters and non-casters.

I disagree - there should be disparity between what spells and not-spells can do. We can adjust the size of that gap, but eliminating it entirely is a non-starter.

Theodoxus

2024-07-16, 10:01 AM

I get that there are people who don't want to play a game in a fantasy world. What I don't get is why they want to play a game that's set in a fantasy world as if it's not in a fantasy world.

What I also don't get, is why if you're wanting to play mr ordinary, you then decide to play with other peoples toys to make you mr extraordinary. Or, if you only want to play mr ordinary, you cry when everyone else is mr extraordinary.

And then there's the degrees of extra one can be. As you rightly point out, there are only a handful of subclasses that can be construed as completely non-magical. One could make the argument that even things like manuevers can, in some cases, perform feats that are magic-like; certainly things that common gym rats couldn't accomplish.

Not sure why you're so glib to gloss over the fact that people who don't want to do magical things are also generally the first to beg for magic items to shore up deficits that their desire to be non-magical created. Just cut out the middle man, or confess that being 'non-magical' isn't actually what you want. You actually just don't want to be fantastical. And there are a lot of games out there that peddle that kind of playstyle. D&D isn't one of them, despite the trap options that allow it.

Blatant Beast

2024-07-16, 10:17 AM

Plausibility, sorta goes out the window once PCs have 200+ Hit Points.
Round 1, the party takes 175 Hit Points of damage from three Hellfire Orbs cast by Death Knights. The 20 Constitution Fighter with the Tough Feat, and using Average Hit Points, has around 240 hit points at 20th level.

A lucky player in a game that rolls Hit Points could have even more hit points.
A PC with Evasion might take no damage at all.
Being stabbed like Caesar or Rasputin is just an regular old Adventuring Day to a Barbarian.

People will point out that Hit Points, do not directly translate into "meat damage", but if a Guard has 11 Hit Points, and a CR 1 Soldier has around 22 Hit Points....it starts getting weird that a 20th level Fighter with 20 Strength, is maybe cutting down a Guard with a single blow, likely needs a few attacks to take out a soldier, but an unholy blast that would wipe out a company of Soldiers, is something the Fighter can routinely survive.

Sorta undercuts the notion that action heroes are just regular 'ol joes....clearly they are not.

Psyren

2024-07-16, 10:25 AM

^ This - "Predominantly nonmagical character who uses equipment and skill to keep up with their more supernatural allies" is a perfectly valid character concept. Batman can fight Darkseid just like Hawkeye can fight Loki, and both are cool.

Dr.Samurai

2024-07-16, 10:37 AM

As monsters grow stronger, martials basically stabilize, and casters continue to get more powerful spells.

There's no reason that the below couldn't happen:

1. Martials gain defensive abilities.
2. Martials gain offensive abilities.
3. Monsters gain more traits/abilities to deal with spells.

This would keep Boromir relevant, and Elminister wouldn't necessarily be able to slam dunk any encounter on his own.

Theodoxus

2024-07-16, 10:45 AM

And if you think Batman, Hawkeye, or Black Widow are the same as Rocky, or the Accountant, or Tasha Yar, I have a bridge to sell you. News flash, Batman can go toe to toe with Darkseid because that's how it's written - certainly not because their power sets are on par.

Y'all are dodging around the actual points I'm making and sticking with the strawmen you find easy to knock down. My point stands. If you don't want to play with magic as spells, but are ok with boosting yourself with magic as items, that's hypocrisy. If you want to play in a magical fantasy world without the magic or the fantasy, fine. Just don't cry when you're underpowered or beg someone else to give you magical fantasy gear to compensate. That's it.

Sorinth

2024-07-16, 10:54 AM

As monsters grow stronger, martials basically stabilize, and casters continue to get more powerful spells.

There's no reason that the below couldn't happen:

1. Martials gain defensive abilities.
2. Martials gain offensive abilities.
3. Monsters gain more traits/abilities to deal with spells.

This would keep Boromir relevant, and Elminister wouldn't necessarily be able to slam dunk any encounter on his own.

Yeah in terms of balance boosting martial defensively and making more monsters relatively immune to lower level stuff would be a good thing. In particular shoring up weak saving throws through features would be great. In terms of monsters I've always felt most fiends should have something closer to the Rakshasa Limited Magic Immunity as opposed to the generic Magic Resistance. But there would probably have to be something done with Cantrips to not be level 0 spells.

Darth Credence

2024-07-16, 11:39 AM

The problem is your point doesn't "stand". You think it is hypocrisy to want to not cast spells while still using magic items. That is simply your opinion on it, not something immutable. Being able to cast spells is not the same thing as being willing to use magic items to most - you see it as so, and think it is hypocrisy to do one but not the other. But others see them as two separate things, so wanting one but not the other is not hypocrisy.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the stand. The idea of a person without magic wielding a magic weapon is pretty common. Tolkien hits it several times, with the barrow sword Merry wounds the Witch King with, and Sting. If someone who has never played D&D before gets in a game and wants to play Bilbo, they will likely be a thief, and may want a sword like Sting at some point. This does not make them a hypocrite for not playing an arcane trickster.

Psyren

2024-07-16, 11:42 AM

You say "because that's how it's written" like that's somehow a negative when that's not at all the case. Writing has to be plausible - Batman going toe-to-toe with Darkseid works because it's typically playing to his established strengths of being highly-prepared and having the right tool for the job. Those are concepts a Badass Normal can represent just fine in a D&D context too.

In the Avengers, Hawkeye works because he was able to outsmart Loki - Loki had the reflexes to catch the arrow, but Hawkeye was able to use remote/timed detonation to hit him anyway. That's something else a D&D character could do with the right magic bow, simply by abstracting the attack bonus or other properties.

There's no dodging. Badass Normals who bridge the gap with magic items are a valid character concept. And enough people want to play that concept that WotC will continue to officially support it. Deal with it.

Exactly - it's as basic as basic fantasy gets.

Dr.Samurai

2024-07-16, 11:50 AM

Is it hypocritical to not want Boromir to be able to cast Fireball, but maybe he has a Volley attack that targets an area with arrows and deals a bunch of damage, reflex save for half?

Skrum

2024-07-16, 11:56 AM

I don't object to this character concept, I'm just wondering what this looks like in game terms, printed on the page.

Is it "here's the Fighter, the mundane soldier or sellsword class" and then there's a little footnote saying "this class isn't intended to be played as presented; the DM should work to give this character a lot of items. More than anyone else is getting. Otherwise it's not really a functional class, at compared to these other classes."

That to me is RIDICULOUS.

At the very least the class should have a feature, Advanced Arsenal, which is just a list of magic items that they get to pick from. Doesn't count against their attunement slots, only they can use them, but they're guaranteed magic items - ones they can pick to match whatever strategy or playstyle they're going for. And they get more and more as they level.

Maybe this is a good idea? Maybe a bad one? But I'd really like to hear if something like that would be acceptable to the people defending Normal Guy With Toys.

Sorinth

2024-07-16, 12:05 PM

I don't object to this character concept, I'm just wondering what this looks like in game terms, printed on the page.

That to me is RIDICULOUS.

Maybe this is a good idea? Maybe a bad one? But I'd really like to hear if something like that would be acceptable to the people defending Normal Guy With Toys.

For sure a Batman inspired class should have a feature that gives them access to batman toys and or take otherwise mundane toys every has access to and make them work better (Likely via action economy). But not every mundane fighter/sellsword is going to be batman style either, some should just have significantly more HP, better saves, more DPR, etc...

Dr.Samurai

2024-07-16, 12:09 PM

Ultimately, the game is a team game, a cooperative game. That includes with the DM as well. I think there's a desire to have a character that's somehow completely divorced from the DM and the campaign, and just "works". Like some lone soldier of fortune that carries everything he needs in a satchel and can go anywhere on his motorcycle and needs or wants for nothing.

Which is cool and all, and because of the breadth of spells (both in number of spells known and slots, and in what spells can do) you can make a character like that with a spellcaster to some degree.

But personally, I LOVE finding magic items. I don't care that my ability to detect hostile threats comes from my sword, or that I can commune with my god through my relic armor. I love the concept of a warrior that is going toe to toe with monsters without blasting fire out of his fingertips. But if I find a sword that lets me shoot fire out of it like the Master Sword, I'm fine with that. In fact, it sounds awesome. And it's within my concept.

If that is considered hypocritical by some, I'm okay with that too; everyone is entitled to their opinion. But I disagree with it of course.

But even before we talk about magic items, just giving warriors more defenses, more offenses, better action economy, can go a significant way in evening out the playing field.

Theodoxus

2024-07-16, 12:09 PM

@Skrum thank you!

If normal guy with toys isn't codified, it becomes 'mother may I' and I don't know why Pex isn't in here too. Do these normal guys also say "No thank you" to fully healing overnight? How much innate, otherworldly magic are the unwilling to accept? D&D isn't Earth (whatever number you want to throw at it). Normal guys are dudes in the tavern waiting for the demons or goblins or whatever to show up and tear it to pieces unless the not-normal dudes show up to stop it.

Skrum

2024-07-16, 12:11 PM

But not every mundane fighter/sellsword is going to be batman style either, some should just have significantly more HP, better saves, more DPR, etc...

I mean that's my preferred pick; Boromir is still "Boromir" except now he can swim up a waterfall, leap 40' in the air, outrun a horse, bench press the King's Royal Carriage, and cut a man at fast and so cleanly the man doesn't know he's been cut.

Sorinth

2024-07-16, 12:19 PM

Or Boromir can still be Boromir not be able to do any of those things but he has the "Brute" feature that some monster stat blocks have, has a BA shield bash attack, has an extra 50 HP and is immune to fear effects instead.

EDIT: And just to add, there's no problem with a class/subclass that is a "mundane" and can do the things you listed.

Psyren

2024-07-16, 12:42 PM

Where on earth did you get "a lot of items, more than anyone else is getting" from? Because what my DMG says is this:

Levels 1-4: Local Heroes
...
At the start of their careers, characters use 1st- and 2nd-level spells and wield mundane gear. The magic items they find include common consumable items (potions and scrolls) and a very few uncommon permanent items. Their magic can have a big impact in a single encounter, but it doesnt change the course of an adventure.

...

Levels 5-10: Heroes of the Realm
...
They start acquiring more permanent magic items (uncommon and rare ones) as well, which will serve them for the rest of their careers.

...

Levels 11-16: Masters of the Realm
...
The adventurers find rare magic items (and very rare ones) that bestow similarly powerful abilities.

...

Levels 17-20: Masters of the World
...
Characters have several rare and very rare magic items at their disposal, and begin discovering legendary items such as a vorpal sword or a staff of the magi.

That's the official expectation set by the game for everyone. You're free to ignore that expectation of course, but then you forfeit the right to have coherent or meritorious complaints about martial performance relative to challenges in those tiers.

Dr.Samurai

2024-07-16, 01:07 PM

That's the official expectation set by the game for everyone.
Wizard: pulls up on motorcycle, dismounts, strikes match against beard stubble, lights a pipe, takes a drag and exhales smoke in the DM's face Keep your pathetic handouts. I get everything I need from my class features.

Psyren

2024-07-16, 01:21 PM

Wizard: pulls up on motorcycle, dismounts, strikes match against beard stubble, lights a pipe, takes a drag and exhales smoke in the DM's face Keep your pathetic handouts. I get everything I need from my class features.

"X class can perform better than Y class without following the expected guidelines" to me is irrelevant - the expected guidelines still exist, and were clearly communicated to the DM. To quote Crawford "it's not a PvP game."

pothocboots

2024-07-16, 01:23 PM

Badass Normals who bridge the gap with magic items are a valid character concept.

Yes it is A valid option for those who want to be a Badass Normal and yet bridge the gap, now why is that the only option?

And enough people want to play that concept that WotC will continue to officially support it. Deal with it.

Enough people want to play a Badass Normal without being a Christmas tree that WotC could support them as well.

Psyren

2024-07-16, 01:38 PM

Yes it is A valid option for those who want to be a Badass Normal and yet bridge the gap, now why is that the only option?

It's not the only option, picking a playstyle like Wuxia or Mythic Fantasy instead of the default Heroic Fantasy exists too. You'll just have to put some work in.

Skrum

2024-07-16, 01:49 PM

If one class has a potency/power of 9/10, and another class has only a 4/10, you can't very well give those two classes relatively the same items and also claim items are the balancing factor. If the fighter gets a +2 sword at the same time the wizard gets a +2 spell focus, nothing is balanced. The fighter can do exactly what he could before, just a little harder, but it's still way less than the wizard.

Further - the entire idea of the Batman or Ironman or Black Widow concept is they have *more and better* tools than everyone else. Not the same. They *make up* for the fact they have no powers by having better and more items.

This has nothing to do with being some self-sufficient Rambo. It has to do with the wizard knowing, levels in advance, that they will have access to fireball at 5th and dimension door at 7th and synaptic static at 9th. And the fighter is just like "I can't wait to find out what the DM gives me! Idk when it'll be, or what it'll do, but I sure am excited!" I like surprises as much as the next person, but I like being able to plan my character build even more.

Theodoxus

2024-07-16, 02:04 PM

Yeah, tell that to the artificer who isn't going to spend any of their build points to help the fighter out with a repeating crossbow. Or how the wizard just needs that ring of invisibility, just in case. Or the cleric who hoards all the healing potions because 'I'm a doctor, not a nursemaid'. It's not a PvP game works only so long as everyone plays it that way. See how long that lasts when the rogue keeps pick pocketing the paladin, or the ranger's bear keeps eating all the rations. Same goes for magic item divvy. One hopes you're playing with mature people. In my history, that's a fools errand. There's always a schemer just waiting for some rubes.

The fighter just needs to plan to go on quests to get the exact gear they need. I'm sure the DM is perfectly accommodating to that, and won't simply say 'I'm sorry, that item doesn't exist on this world. Where did you even hear about such a thing?"

Dr.Samurai

2024-07-16, 02:18 PM

I don't have the same concern about being able to design a build that I follow, but I do agree that martials should be badass even without the magic items.

But I disagree with the (what appears to be) disdain coming through regarding magic items. And I think the disconnect here is the following:

1. What people think is required in order to "bridge the gap" in a meaningful way.
2. Whether people think those requirements fit within their vision of a badass normal or not.
3. Whether people think those requirements are more suitable for a magic item.

As an example, my badass barbarian is mediocre at ranged combat. If this is a gap we want to bridge, some solutions might be:

1. Badass Normal - Better ranged attacks. Instead of the game forcing martials to choose between fighting styles, simply allow for them to be versatile.
2. Badass Normal - Resilient flying mount.
3. Magic Items - Fly speed, magic weapons.
4. Heroic/Mythic/Demigod - Super jump heights, flight, chuck pieces of terrain, whatever else people think of.

I don't have an issue with any of these. The issue I have is that 1 seems to get completely overlooked and we immediately jump to 4, and 2 and 3 are sneered at. I don't mind mythic warriors in the game, but I don't want it to be the only way you can play at higher levels. All options should be on the table.

clash

2024-07-16, 02:24 PM

To me I don't care what the class concept is (be average joe at the gym), it can be valid so long as it a) remains competitive at all levels of part and b) has anything the class is assumed to get written into the class.

Don't count on the DM to balance the classes for you.

Back on topic of the new spellcasting, it's in a bit of a tough spot. There's certain class fantasies that have been shoehorned into spells and spellcasting classes in a way that has actually been very harmful to the fantasy itself.

A summoner is either overpowered because it's a full caster with a martial buddy or it's a blaster class. A dedicated summoner class could have missed of the power be from their summons while they provide support. A shifter has been chopped off at the ankles by tacking it onto the nature caster. Simulacrum is flat out broken but that doesn't mean I want it to go away. It could work if something was built around it. There's some really cool spell ideas but they can't exist as extra side content the wizard can do. They need to be their own thing. The real problem is wotc needs to decide what it is that Wizards do. Cause if Wizards can do everything then that just means they have to keep removing options or making them less interesting to try to balance Wizards.

Theodoxus

2024-07-16, 02:49 PM

I don't have the same concern about being able to design a build that I follow, but I do agree that martials should be badass even without the magic items.

But I disagree with the (what appears to be) disdain coming through regarding magic items.

I have no issues with magic items. I have issues with people poopooing mythic warriors because they can't grok that there is fundamentally no difference between being able to shoot lightning from your eyes vs being able to shoot lightning from the tip of your sword. Shooting someone, and then dropping your weapon all mea culpa style doesn't negate the fact that you shot someone with lightning. And yes, it's hypocritical to say you don't want to 'do magic' and yet grab an object that 'does magic'. Does it really matter where the imputus comes from? Spell or charge - it's still magic that you're doing. To claim you don't want to play a magic class, and still use magic is hypocrisy. I don't know how else to describe it.

And I think the disconnect here is the following:

As an example, my badass barbarian is mediocre at ranged combat. If this is a gap we want to bridge, some solutions might be:

It's just degrees of the fantasy I'm trying to figure out. Why is healing to 100% in a night ok, but Wuxia style jumps isn't, unless you're a high level monk? Why are wizards required to both know all the spells useful in combat, and all the spells useful to bolster their party members through item creation? Seems to put a lot of onus on the one class everything apparently thinks is OP. I wonder why that is?

Psyren

2024-07-16, 03:18 PM

If one class has a potency/power of 9/10, and another class has only a 4/10, you can't very well give those two classes relatively the same items and also claim items are the balancing factor.

Yet again, it's not a PvP game. If one class is 9/10 and one is 4/10, but you only need 6/10 to be on par with level-appropriate monsters, then getting the final +2 from items does indeed works. Both of them hit that benchmark they need to hit. The fact that one class does it easier, or does it without those items is irrelevant to the system intent.

(And realistically, the difference isn't 9 vs 4 in fifth edition, it's more like 8 vs 6 and you need to hit 7.)

No they don't, that's nonsense. Black Widow + items does not become Doctor Strange, she's still way behind. But what she can do with her gadgets/gear now, is contribute to a fight against Ultron or Loki or Proxima Midnight.

"Don't play with bad players" sounds like table stakes to me (literally.)

One hopes you're playing with mature people.

Do you seriously not?

Because if not, I sympathize, but no book can solve that either.

Dr.Samurai

2024-07-16, 03:26 PM

Perseus using the gorgon's head to petrify the kraken is so obviously very different than Perseus casting a Flesh to Stone spell. I mean... I don't know how else to describe it. Fighting the Chimera on the back of Pegasus is extremely different to casting a Fly spell.

When you look at the game simply as mechanics, and don't care about aesthetics and narratives, then I can understand why this doesn't make sense.

But some people want to play a (relatively) normal warrior. As normal as D&D allows you to be. That you can't see the difference between being a source of magic power yourself, and using magic items instead, is not anyone else's problem but your own. It's like balking at the idea that someone would want to play a soldier that uses guns as opposed to a person that shoots bullets from their eyes. Shouting "hypocrite!!!" seems to just be missing the point entirely.

There comes a point, in the tiered system WotC created, where a badass normal no longer is. There's nothing 'normal' about falling 200' off a cliff, and getting up nigh unscathed, and get back into a fight, only to sleep it off and be back at 100% the next morning. I noticed no one has answered my question about how much natural magic is too much. Apparently everyone here recovers from a broken bone, a 3rd degree burn, a lacerated stomach, or a case of appendicitis by just sleeping for 6-8 hours, because that's considered normal in D&D terms.
Do people break bones and get 3rd degree burns in the game? The game glosses over a lot of things. But there's still a base level. I don't normally try to take 200ft falls or wade through lava, so most of the times we can get by narratively. Obviously a d&d warrior is not going to track exactly to a badass normal, because they're quite resilient as you say. But that's not a compelling argument to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Why is healing to 100% in a night ok
Well, how do you describe your wounds? What does "okay" mean here? Okay to adventure the next day? Or "you had all of these gashes and fractures but now they are completely healed"?

but Wuxia style jumps isn't, unless you're a high level monk?
Again... I think they're okay. I would just classify the differently. Seems like you're annoyed that one would be considered a mythic hero ability as opposed to a badass normal ability?

Why are wizards required to both know all the spells useful in combat, and all the spells useful to bolster their party members through item creation? Seems to put a lot of onus on the one class everything apparently thinks is OP. I wonder why that is?
None of my games have had item creation in them. I'm not saying wizards need to create items for people.

Darth Credence

2024-07-16, 03:29 PM

There is a fundamental difference between being able to shoot lightning from your sword or your eyes - it is much easier to be in a situation where you don't have your sword. Saying that other people cannot grok something that is simply not true is quite insulting.

It still is not hypocritical to be willing to use a magic weapon while not wanting to play a person using magic. You're the only one who appears to believe it to be so. This is a roleplaying game, and if the role one wants to play is "person with no magical talents who wields a legendary magical sword", that does not make them a hypocrite.

Added to the fact that hypocrisy is not generally as bad a thing as people claim when using it as an insult, and even less so when you are talking about how one plays a game, and I wonder why you bring it up. Heck, fine, it's hypocrisy. Everyone who wants to not play a caster but wants to use a magic item is a big hypocrite. I'll make some shirts so that they can be proudly worn as people have fun playing their non-magical characters with magic items.

clash

2024-07-16, 03:31 PM

(And realistically, the difference isn't 9 vs 4 in fifth edition, it's more like 8 vs 6 and you need to hit 7.)

I can't comprehend how this is just seen as ok. PvP or not a basic assumption in a class based game is that all classes are roughly equal in effectiveness, with trade offs of course. Even if the difference is 6 vs 8 that's still a problem to be that requires fixing. Especially if the benchmark for being effective is a 7. You're outright claiming that some of the classes are not designed to hit the benchmark in effectiveness. To me that's a big problem.

Psyren

2024-07-16, 03:46 PM

It's seen as ok because it is, and the market has proven that repeatedly. The edition that came closest to total class parity regardless of power source was the worst-received one in D&D's history.

Especially if the benchmark for being effective is a 7. You're outright claiming that some of the classes are not designed to hit the benchmark in effectiveness. To me that's a big problem.

What I'm saying is that the magic item directives by tier in the DMG weren't put there as an April Fool's joke; they're an expectation. This isn't to say that you can't run an itemless game and have fun, but if you do and then complain that martials can't keep up with printed challenges, it's not the books' fault.

Rafaelfras

2024-07-16, 03:55 PM

In my opinion, having almost all classes at my table and being in a level 18 game, all classes hit the 7. With Magic itens all went over 8.
In all my years of 5th ed I never thought that any gap where nowhere near what we had in 3rd ed, where wizards clerics and druids where objectively stronger the everything else.
I saw balance shifting over the levels when a new ability made some classes push ahead and then another class would get the spotlight for a while.
After level 13 our sorlock begun to push ahead because his build finally got everything he wanted and now he is left behind because he isn't getting the abilities that come to classes at 17+ like 9th level spells, while still having what he wanted for his character.
Never our martials fell behind our casters and magic items help incredibly with that not only in increasing damage capabilities (which martials get way more benefit from) but also covering gaps. Our fighter got a broom of flying, our paladin a spear with the returning property and flying boots, our rogue a cloak of the bat and our ranger a cape of the mountain bank. And a lot of other utility itens that they got over years of adventure that filled the gaps on all our party members, martials and casters alike.
The number of short and long rests in an adventure plays a far greater role on the balance of the game than any other factors.
Its been my experience, over almost 10 years of 5ed from level 1-18 that there is no class in this game that I would call a 6.

Spells with Saving Throws already get hosed by Legendary Resistance.

Agreed, not only that monsters resistances and immunities to conditions go up as monsters get more powerful

.
Are Martial Epic Feats really going to be balanced with Wish?
Should Martial PCs be able to kill creatures outright on a hit a few times a day?

How do you create a weapon based feature, that is comparable in power level to Wish?
(Somebody, needs to ask Mr. Owl)
They can do that with a Vorpal sword and a lucky blade.

I disagree - there should be disparity between what spells and not-spells can do. We can adjust the size of that gap, but eliminating it entirely is a non-starter.

Agreed.
People forget that what happened to Raistlin was a consequence of his high sorcery test, something that did not happened with other wizards, and while you can replicate the dangers of the test on game, they will be restricted to the test and not be a mechanic of the wizard class.
Forgotten realms also have dangerous magic but one of the functions of the weave is to provide a SAFE method of casting spells. So average spell casting is safe while specific spells may have their own risks like wish and contact other plane

GeneralVryth

2024-07-16, 04:35 PM

As has been pointed out by others, the DMG recommends giving out some magic items. Personally, I have always thought D&D 5e14 was missing a narrative power subsystem. A system that gives warriors ways to get magic items outside of what the DM provides, or allows them to build up other resources like follower/influence that provides a different kind of power, or maybe boons to get the mythinc hero vibe going. For spellcasters it's where the more powerful/dangerous ritual magic should exist. And non-magical classes should get more bites at this apple, just like they should get more attunement slots.

I don't have the same concern about being able to design a build that I follow, but I do agree that martials should be badass even without the magic items.

But I disagree with the (what appears to be) disdain coming through regarding magic items. And I think the disconnect here is the following:

As an example, my badass barbarian is mediocre at ranged combat. If this is a gap we want to bridge, some solutions might be:

I don't have an issue with any of them either. In fact 5e24 should be making 1 a little easier with the built in ability to adjust Fighting Styles over time. My only issue is people claiming 4 isn't magical and trying to attach it to non-magical classes.

It's not hypocritical because there is a difference between the character a player is trying to play, and what a character in world may want. Also, for someone who goes on and on about mythic heroes, you seem to conveniently forget most were either descended from gods (sounds like a non-standard race or magical class or subclass), supported by gods (boons), or did use magical items to overcome challenges. And you know what there are class options for all of those and your Wuxia preferences in 5e14 and they are getting better 5e24.

Most wounds don't get narrated/described like that specifically to avoid the verisimilitude issue you are describing. And in my experience when a character does suffer a major wound like a broken or lost limb, it does take longer to heal or magic to overcome it.

Schwann145

2024-07-16, 05:49 PM

Does it really matter where the imputus comes from?
Yes, absolutely it does.

If I don't have the capability to cast magic of my own (by being a non-spellcaster), that doesn't suddenly change the fact that I live in a world with monsters and magic and I need to find a way to "catch up" in order to survive. Magic items allow this. It is in no way hypocritical to use them. The desire to "not be a magic slinger" is a player desire, meant to match up with their thematic idea for what and who their character is. It has nothing to do with character desire; I'm sure the character would love to have "the spark" of magic, but alas they didn't win that lottery.

warty goblin

2024-07-16, 07:24 PM

l
People forget that what happened to Raistlin was a consequence of his high sorcery test, something that did not happened with other wizards, and while you can replicate the dangers of the test on game, they will be restricted to the test and not be a mechanic of the wizard class.

If you wanna wizard on Krynn (at least Ansalon) you gotta take the Test, or get hunted down as a renegade. And while what happened to Raistlin is extreme, the books are clear that the Test messes up everyone to a degree, permanent injuries do not seem terribly uncommon. It's rather the purpose, to keep the riffraff out. Remember, this is the group that when Dalamar shows up with permanent unhealing weeping wounds for having betrayed Raistlin, pretty much go "yeah, we get it" when Dalamar wants to go back to keep learning from Raistlin. Folks take their wizardry seriously.

Peat

2024-07-16, 07:31 PM

(And realistically, the difference isn't 9 vs 4 in fifth edition, it's more like 8 vs 6 and you need to hit 7.)

This is how it's always been at the games I've played in and everyone's been happy with it.

I've been following this thread along thinking of the best way to phrase "I get why people wish D&D was more friendly to different versions of fantasy but honestly at this point, when I play D&D I want to play the version of fantasy that's like D&D with all the jankiness that comes with that because honestly that's always been a fun game that works fine".

And this quote kind of nails how it translates. Everyone has been able to contribute. Everyone's been okay with how their role has played out, even if they're vastly different. I get how that that doesn't happen for some people given the power disparities D&D includes but it's not hard for it to happen. It's not like my groups were masterpieces of maturity either.

And to sort of tie in to where this thread started - I'm not against changes to D&D, but powerful, flexible and easy spellcasting is something I'd like to see stay.

Pex

2024-07-16, 08:26 PM

Which is cool and all, and because of the breadth of spells (both in number of spells known and slots, and in what spells can do) you can make a character like that with a spellcaster to some degree.

If that is considered hypocritical by some, I'm okay with that too; everyone is entitled to their opinion. But I disagree with it of course.

But even before we talk about magic items, just giving warriors more defenses, more offenses, better action economy, can go a significant way in evening out the playing field.

Doesn't bother me either, but some people resent a fighter has to use magic items. It's an old complaint since 3E, since before the Tier System was even created. Metaphorically investigate 5E threads of the past, and you'll find that complaint. There is a point to the argument, but it gets overblown. Some people aren't happy unless a fighter could carve a hole in reality to travel across planes or teleport. Others don't want that wanting a purely mundane character while complaining wizards can plane shift and teleport. There are a few, personal opinion, more reasonable folk who just want the fighter to keep up with the math of the game. The fighter can have a ring that turns him invisible or fire resistant armor, but instead of the game expecting the fighter to have a +2 weapon and +3 armor at a particular level have their class abilities give them the plus numbers needed and don't give it to the wizard too.

Psyren

2024-07-16, 08:45 PM

Injuries/scars are one thing; what happened to Raistlin (having part of his life-force remotely siphoned across time) was something else entirely.

And being hunted as a renegade is an organizational thing for trying to practice your art without joining their special club - not some kind of limitation imposed by the magic system itself. You can have angry established mages come after the PCs in any setting you want without changing the rules of magic themselves.

Pex

2024-07-16, 09:00 PM

@Skrum thank you!

If normal guy with toys isn't codified, it becomes 'mother may I' and I don't know why Pex isn't in here too.

Playing SWTOR MMO & Civilization VI

Do these normal guys also say "No thank you" to fully healing overnight? How much innate, otherworldly magic are the unwilling to accept? D&D isn't Earth (whatever number you want to throw at it). Normal guys are dudes in the tavern waiting for the demons or goblins or whatever to show up and tear it to pieces unless the not-normal dudes show up to stop it.

I forget if it was earlier this thread or another, but I don't have resentment to put value in the Tier System. Warriors should have Nice Things, but I don't need them to carve holes in reality to travel. I'm happy playing a warrior to get two attacks at 5th level and not care the wizard got Fireball. I'll play a wizard in another game when I want to do that. I got a +1 shield. Woohoo! Hey with these slippers I no longer roll with disadvantage on stealth while wearing full plate. Yippee!

However, as I say often. D&D does not have to apologize for existing. It is the core of the game to go from low power level 1 to high power level 20. If you're not liking the power discrepancy between fighter and wizard at level 20, ok that's a thing to talk about, but I will rant against any argument complaining about how dare wizards or any spellcaster have such power they do have. D&D is going from zero to hero to superhero. If you don't like superhero power levels, ok fine, end your campaign before you reach that level, but don't argue it shouldn't exist for anyone. If you want to play Gamestyle X and resent you have to ban or alter 50% or more of D&D to make it work the problem is you, not D&D. Find a different game system that will do what you want. Don't demand D&D must change to your preferred Gamestyle X. You are welcome to enjoy Gamestyle X. Have fun. You don't have to play D&D if it's not working for you.

House rules are fine - a page to list all the changes you want to fix the rules you don't like and/or help with the emersion of the gameworld you want to convey. If you need to write your own Player's Handbook then the game system itself is not for you. If you resent even having to write just that one page there's nothing to be done. You're letting your nitpicks annoy the heck out of you. I still remember my first 5E game. The DM had his house rules. A few weeks later he would have new house rules. Few weeks later those were gone and new house rules came up. He was never satisfied. He kept writing and rewriting until finally he gave up in frustration and ended the game because he could never have perfect rules. "Get over it" sounds harsh, but sometimes that's what you have to do.

I got over it with the 5E skill system to enjoy the game, but I'll still complain about it.

warty goblin

2024-07-16, 09:32 PM

Injuries/scars are one thing; what happened to Raistlin (having part of his life-force remotely siphoned across time) was something else entirely.

I mean yeah, so? Most people don't get ensnared by a lich when they take the Test. At the same time it's also not exactly unheard of, Par-Salian mentions it as a concern prior to Raistlin's Test, and Fistandandilus makes it clear in his conversation with Raistlin that he isn't the first. It's just that all the others whose choices put them in contact with Fistandantilus died.

The point stands that every wizard who's more than a dabbler like Gilthanas proves they are willing to die for the magic in order to advance. This isn't just a stupid club rule, magic on Krynn is directly tied to the three gods, who regularly commune with magic users, even during the centuries between the Cataclysm and the War of the Lance. The Test is both generally required and potentially lethal because the gods want it that way*. Willingness to sacrifice for the magic is pretty clearly a divine mandate that's required to gain access to magic, indeed it's somewhere between strongly implied and outright stated that the reason Raistlin is so powerful is that there isn't anything he wouldn't sacrifice for the magic.

Just ask Caramon.

* This isn't directly stated to the best of my knowledge, but if the three didn't want the Test to work the way the Test works, they have ample ability to change it because theyve had hundreds of years to tell the conclave heads to do exactly that. And IIRC the only magic user of any significant power who doesn't take the Test is Ariakas, who is Takhisis' favorite boy, so Nuitari is probably just doing mom a favor with him.

Psyren

2024-07-16, 10:11 PM

I mean yeah, so?

So - Raistlin's condition isn't representative of Krynn magic as a whole being inherently dangerous the way Schwann described. His circ*mstance is unique to him.

And IIRC the only magic user of any significant power who doesn't take the Test is Ariakas, who is Takhisis' favorite boy, so Nuitari is probably just doing mom a favor with him.[/quote]

And yet you can do arcane magic without taking it just fine. It's ultimately mortals who enforce the prohibition on renegades, not the gods.

You might be worse at it (due to lack of proper training), or need to resort to stuff like Wild Sorcery instead of High Sorcery, but your powers/access to magic don't get switched off or anything.

Rafaelfras

2024-07-17, 10:31 AM

Just ask Caramon.

It is still a test outside the class. A renegade wizard as Psyren pointed out can do magic just fine.

In 3rd ed. the test was a prerequisite for the prestige class wizard of the high sorcery. It still wasn't a mechanic for the class
If I want to play on Dragon lance, I can use the 5e wizard as it is, his magic would suffer no alterations and it would be the DM job to set up the test and possible consequences.

Just like I said on some posts ago. This is a setting thing not a mechanic thing.
DMs need to set up dangerous magic and how characters will interact to it. The game sets the reliable magic that a wizard will use from day to day in the normal play of the class.

Dr.Samurai

2024-07-17, 11:19 AM

Some people aren't happy unless a fighter could carve a hole in reality to travel across planes or teleport. Others don't want that wanting a purely mundane character while complaining wizards can plane shift and teleport.
My view of this is the following:

1. It doesn't bother me if some subclass of fighter can cut a planar gate with a sword strike. It's not my aesthetic but I don't care if it's in the game if other people like it. Where I draw the line is the argument that fighters MUST be able to do this in order to keep up. I don't buy into the idea that each class must be singularly capable of dealing with every scenario that people can dream of, and that warriors must eventually be able to fly, fight in the vacuum of space, teleport to other galaxies, and lift the planet on their shoulders.

2. The idea that because casters have the option of casting Plane Shift or Teleport, therefore therefore these are requirements that set a bar for everyone else is such a pernicious argument that I don't think holds any weight.

My thoughts are that you could (to use 5e's mechanics) have a fighter with a Demigod subclass, a Knight Champion sublcass, etc. that lean into these tropes/genres and provide powerful features. The Knight Champion may get some buffed up combat abilities, a squire (sidekick), and then a loyal mount, and maybe can use Str for any ranged weapon attack, etc etc. The demigod instead can leap super high, plane shift, and do other "mythic" things. The Anime subclass can fly, cut someone so fast they don't notice, and have catastrophic nosebleeds when they roll a nat 1.

Psyren

2024-07-17, 12:38 PM

It is still a test outside the class. A renegade wizard as Psyren pointed out can do magic just fine.

Exactly.

And I'm less familiar with 2e and earlier, so maybe there was some hard-coded restriction in the magic system for arcane casters who didn't take the Test. I do remember 2e had weird rules like several classes that just straight up stopped being able to level until you challenged or otherwise got the approval of some other high-level NPC out in the world, e.g. druids couldn't level any higher without beating the existing Archdruid or Monks needing to go around and challenge various Masters to become Grandmaster or whatnot, and if you didn't go do those things you literally stopped being able to level up any higher. So maybe the earliest iterations of Dragonlance put a similar level cap on renegades who didn't go take their Test, I don't know. I'm not against the idea existing for those who want to use something like that at their table, but I can also see why they tossed that kind of thing out of the default game.

My view of this is the following:

Agreed on both counts. This kind of thing is the domain of a Fighter subclass. I could see Horizon Walker rangers doing this too.

This has mostly been my experience as well. I say mostly because the druid's countless bags of hit points does get a little frustrating at times, but it doesn't prevent my fighter from shining. It's just... why can't the warrior be so tough :smallconfused:

Have you seen the toned-down Moon Druid? (Well, I say toned-down, but we haven't seen the new beast statblocks yet - but at least AC and HP aren't a concern anymore.)

I think "Demigod" should be a separate game mode entirely, kind of like Mythic Adventures from Pathfinder. Something you can layer on top of the existing class progression framework or replace it with entirely, in order to swap your game over to a much higher-powered playstyle.

Skrum

2024-07-17, 01:31 PM

I'll complain about a lot of stuff on a forum; it's like the place to do it and talk about meta stuff. But actual gameplay, a large part of my concern/thought is Equal Coolness. Does everyone get a chance to be cool and heroic.

Do I care that the wizard and cleric can cast fireball and teleport and wall of force and raise the dead and holy weapon and death ward and aura of life? No of course not; that are all awesome. I love all of those spells.

But like. What is the fighter doing lol. The wizard can level a city block with meteor swarm. That's so gotdamn cool! I love it. But what cool thing does the barb get to do.

IMO, the coolness of the wizard and fighter are pretty even though 6. Yes the wizard can fireball, but the fighter has two attacks that feel super impactful, they can go up to 4 if they want, and they're meaningfully tougher than the wizard.

Over the next few levels though, the fighter plateaus quite a bit while the wizard gets 4th and then 5th level spells. In tough battles, the wizard more and more often becomes the factor; how they use their spells and how effective they are becomes a bigger and bigger part of party victory.

And that's a real shame. There's no reason the fighter needs to stop being cool at level 6. But they just aren't given enough tools.

Dr.Samurai

2024-07-17, 01:39 PM

@Psyren: I haven't seen the new moon-druid, will take a look. Where should I look? Is there something more current than the playtest?

@Skrum: All agreed.

Psyren

2024-07-17, 01:49 PM

But like. What is the fighter doing lol. The wizard can level a city block with meteor swarm. That's so gotdamn cool! I love it. But what cool thing does the barb get to do.

They're wrestling dragons lol. Or putting an arrow/javelin through a Beholder's central eye. Or shrugging off a mindflayer's mind blast before decapitating it. Or ripping an adamantine door off its hinges barehanded. Stuff like that lol.

@Psyren: I haven't seen the new moon-druid, will take a look. Where should I look? Is there something more current than the playtest?

Yes, but unfortunately it's not too easy to parse. It's a combination of the article (https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1755-the-2024-circle-of-the-moon-druid-and-changes-to) and the video (https://youtu.be/3uXJ8zIu7wQ?si=iS63BELrAtaxuOt4) where they go over the more recent changes. If that's too much, totally understand, the content creator embargo gets lifted in roughly two weeks and we'll have more detailed writeups and stuff then.

JNAProductions

2024-07-17, 01:53 PM

Wrestling Dragons... As long as they're young, and therefore only Large.
Putting something through the Beholder's central eye... Is a good way to narrate a kill after the fight. It's not something they can do mid-fight.
Shrugging off a Mind Blast... Something that Intelligence-based PCs will be better at than physical PCs, as well as most casters having some way to improve their saves through spells and features.
Ripping the door off its hinges... That one makes sense, in the context of the game.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-17, 01:54 PM

And that's a real shame. There's no reason the fighter needs to stop being cool at level 6. But they just aren't given enough tools.

Most classes plateau from levels 6 through 10 though. Levels 5 and/or 6 tend to be huge power boosts for every class, and 1 through 4 also tend to be bang, bang, bang... If you look at what you can achieve with 4th and 5th level spells, they tend not to be much more powerful than 3rd level spells (and certainly aren't in terms of damage).

Also, it's important to note that coolness and effectiveness are not the same thing. Fighters/Barbarians/Rogues remain quite effective in combat in those levels. For all the fancy CC tricks and powerful blasts of a Wizard, they still inflict the best condition on the targets that need it the most, the fastest. And that's dead.

So the trick becomes increasing "coolness" without significantly increasing "effectiveness" while also remaining true to the non-magical roots. It's not the easiest needle to thread and there are at least some improvements coming in 5e24.

Psyren

2024-07-17, 02:09 PM

Wrestling Dragons... As long as they're young, and therefore only Large.

PCs can go past Medium size in this game, not sure if you knew that.

Putting something through the Beholder's central eye... Is a good way to narrate a kill after the fight. It's not something they can do mid-fight.

Right, and unloading enough damage to get to the narration phase is part of the martials' job.

Shrugging off a Mind Blast... Something that Intelligence-based PCs will be better at than physical PCs, as well as most casters having some way to improve their saves through spells and features.

Indomitable, Survivor, Slippery Mind...

I think you're too focused on the ways you can't do something instead of how you can. The latter is called "character building."

JNAProductions

2024-07-17, 02:16 PM

PCs can go past Medium size in this game, not sure if you knew that.

Right, and unloading enough damage to get to the narration phase is part of the martials' job.

Indomitable, Survivor, Slippery Mind...

I think you're too focused on the ways you can't do something instead of how you can. The latter is called "character building."

Go past medium... with magic.
Martials are good at damage, that is true. Casters are too.
Survivor does nothing for Mind Blast. Slippery Mind does nothing for Mind Blast. Both of those are T3 or later features. Indomitable can change your odds, true-if you're rocking +1 to Int Saves, you can expect to go from succeeding 35% of the time to about 58% of the time. That's helpful-though at CR 7, you're likely to encounter a Mind Flayer before you actually get Indomitable. And if you do encounter them when you have it, unlikely to be alone.

Psyren, I know dang well how to build a character. Which is why I know that while you CAN make a martial good at something specific (like Int saves) it takes resources away from your main schtick (which is generally damage) and, more importantly, it's set. Let's say you have a Fighter-you were shut down before by some bad saves on Hold Person cast by a Cult Fanatic. So, level eight-take Indomitable (Wisdom) ensuring that it's less likely to happen. And then your party goes to the Underdark, where they fight Mind Flayers. Your Wisdom save is now far less important than your Intelligence save-and you don't have the option to retrain Indomitable to fix that. You can't alter your build in any significant way to help make those saves.

lall

2024-07-17, 02:18 PM

But actual gameplay, a large part of my concern/thought is Equal Coolness. Does everyone get a chance to be cool and heroic.
Its cool that players can evaluate each class level 1-20 and pick whatever they like. I started late 2e and had no interest in any spellcaster until PF. In 5.5, I believe a battle master can outbard a bard by adding a d10 and a d8 to a persuasion or performance check at level 3. Potentially cooler to some players than leveling cities later on.

Psyren

2024-07-17, 02:24 PM

Go past medium... with magic.

Yes, your point? Consumables, items, and allied buffs exist.

Martials are good at damage, that is true. Casters are too.

Again, and?

Survivor does nothing for Mind Blast. Slippery Mind does nothing for Mind Blast.

Incorrect; this is a 2024 thread, are you familiar with the changes? I'm happy to get you up to speed if not.

Psyren, I know dang well how to build a character.

Maybe you did in 2014, but now I'm not so certain.

Atranen

2024-07-17, 02:57 PM

I don't often play high levels. When I do, I was generally happy in 5e14 with what martials can do (damage). I played a high level sharpshooter fighter, shot a bunch of times, had a great time.

I was relying on the magical characters to get me from place to place and to set up the battlefield. I do get the desire for martial characters who can do more.

Can we tone down the rhetoric in this conversation? It's possible to disagree with others for reasons besides them being bad at the game.

Psyren

2024-07-17, 03:08 PM

I don't often play high levels. When I do, I was generally happy in 5e14 with what martials can do (damage). I played a high level sharpshooter fighter, shot a bunch of times, had a great time.

I was relying on the magical characters to get me from place to place and to set up the battlefield. I do get the desire for martial characters who can do more.

You don't even need that kind of reliance in 2024, as scrolls and potions (plus rules to obtain them) will be in the 2024 PHB. Grab a scroll of Enlarge if you're planning to be a grappler.

Can we tone down the rhetoric in this conversation? It's possible to disagree with others for reasons besides them being bad at the game.

Not sure if this is directed at me, but I never said anyone was bad at the game. Not knowing that things like Indomitable, Disciplined Survivor and Slippery Mind make the associated martials far better at mental saves in 2024 vs 2014 is totally understandable, but it's a knowledge gap that can be corrected.

Atranen

2024-07-17, 03:15 PM

You don't even need that kind of reliance in 2024, as scrolls and potions (plus rules to obtain them) will be in the 2024 PHB. Grab a scroll of Enlarge if you're planning to be a grappler.

The point I imagine JNA is making is that there is not such a big gap between "martial character who is buffed by other magic users" and "martial character who uses scrolls and potions". What would really be nice is a martial who can do these things without the aid of magic at all. I agree with that point.

Psyren

2024-07-17, 03:25 PM

That exists, it's called Rune Knight Fighter, Path of Giants Barb etc.*

*For certain definitions of "without the aid of magic."

Skrum

2024-07-17, 04:18 PM

Idk that we're ever going to see eye to eye, so maybe I'm just wasting my breath, but I flatly disagree.

Someone else covered the objections to your specific claims, so I won't repeat them. And more to the point, I've played in or DM'd well over 200 games of 5e. I see the way the game works. The table I play at has kept martials on par by raining magic items.

For example - my current character, a barb 6 rogue 4, has
- a +3 short sword that adds 1d6 cold to every hit, is "twin crafted" meaning there's two of them for one attunement slot, and prevents any creature struck by it from healing for a round
- a ring that grants necrotic resist and the striding and springing property (like the boots)
- a stone of good luck
- breastplate +1
- another ring that lets him use a healing potion as a bonus action 1/LR
- boots of elven kind
- a helmet of water breathing
- an entire pharmacy of healing potions

And this is like. Average items, for his level. Several characters have better than this. And just to be clear, this is so he can perform the basic functions of a barb. He'll do some good damage, keep something locked down with a grapple, maybe even throw someone off a cliff. But what actually matters to party success, the majority of the time, is if the cleric has twilight sanctuary ready. If the cleric maintained concentration on aura of life. If the sorcerer landed their banish. Etc.

Theodoxus

2024-07-17, 04:25 PM

And then the totally mundane subclass that relies on others to empower them to do all these things.

That exists, it's called Rune Knight Fighter, Path of Giants Barb etc.*

True.

Psyren

2024-07-17, 04:41 PM

Idk that we're ever going to see eye to eye, so maybe I'm just wasting my breath, but I flatly disagree.

You disagree that martials can do those things, or you disagree that they're cool?

Someone else covered the objections to your specific claims, so I won't repeat them.

And I replied to those objections and haven't heard back.

And more to the point, I've played in or DM'd well over 200 games of 5e. I see the way the game works. The table I play at has kept martials on par by raining magic items.

Define "on par."

So if the cleric isn't Twilight + doesn't have Aura of Life and the Sorcerer didn't land their banish, the party doesn't succeed? At all? That seems hella specific/swingy to me.

Pex

2024-07-17, 04:42 PM

But like. What is the fighter doing lol. The wizard can level a city block with meteor swarm. That's so gotdamn cool! I love it. But what cool thing does the barb get to do.

And that's a real shame. There's no reason the fighter needs to stop being cool at level 6. But they just aren't given enough tools.

My 6th level party (4 PCs and an NPC) enters are large chamber unknowingly occupied by 15-20 kobold vampires. NPC hadn't entered yet. We knew at that time we were unprepared to fight them and needed to get out fast. We had means to lock the door by the way we came in and get to a sanctuary area to rest and prepare properly to fight them. It was only a question of everyone getting out of the room before the vampires swarmed us.

I present to you our hero, the battle master fighter with Shield Master feat (shove as a bonus action), Bait & Switch maneuver, and Action Surge. It was all about positioning. Moving about the room he would shove party members closer to the door and out of the room. Switch places with party members to get them closer to the door and out of the room. Action Surge and do it again. He was figuratively Quicksilver saving all the kids when the mansion blew up. We were out of the room, door locked, and booked it to our sanctuary area. It was a beautiful turn to observe. I was floored.

Segev

2024-07-17, 04:47 PM

Do I get to feel cool? Yeah, a lot of the time. I really love this character. But I'm not blind, I can see the mechanics of the game even as I enjoy piledriving a vampire down a 250' pit . I can see how many items it takes to keep me relevant. And I can see how many more opportunities that top classes have to be badasses.What the person you just said you disagree with was advocating for which you said, again, you disagree with is giving martials a way other than 'raining magic items' on them to be relevant. He is saying the game SHOULD have martials who can generate their own temp hp round-by-round because they are that tough, or who can tame and ride a flying steed that they can keep alive to fight in the sky, or who can inhale the vampire in gasseous form to grapple him despite his form being nothing he can get a grip on, and keep it imprisoned until it dies or surrenders.

ZRN

2024-07-17, 04:48 PM

That exists, it's called Rune Knight Fighter, Path of Giants Barb etc.*

*For certain definitions of "without the aid of magic."

Yeah, that's my take at this point. "Badass normal" is a really popular fantasy trope and it's important that it be supported with classes/subclasses like the battlemaster and thief. But you should also be able to play a "martial superhero" who does superhuman stuff without mumbling pseudo-Latin. That's what monks, rune knights, psi warriors, world tree barbarians, etc. are for.

When 5e came out I was disappointed that there weren't enough superhero subclasses for classes like fighter, but I think by now that character type is reasonably well supported.

Pex

2024-07-17, 04:48 PM

My barbarian single handedly hog-tied a tyrannosaurus and killed an adult red dragon that was made into dragonhide armor by the grateful dwarves he saved. I miss that campaign so much.

ZRN

2024-07-17, 04:51 PM

He is saying the game SHOULD have martials who can generate their own temp hp round-by-round because they are that tough

Champion fighters do this at high levels (real healing instead of temp HP even).

or who can tame and ride a flying steed that they can keep alive to fight in the sky

Why would this be a class-based thing? Sounds like a good idea for a section of the DMG though. (Isn't that where "subdual" damage came from in 3e?)

or who can inhale the vampire in gaseous form to grapple him despite his form being nothing he can get a grip on, and keep it imprisoned until it dies or surrenders.

That one's pretty specific!

Skrum

2024-07-17, 05:38 PM

You disagree that martials can do those things, or you disagree that they're cool?

I stand by what I said originally; as the game progresses beyond 6th level, martial classes have less and less opportunity to do cool things. Your examples were varying levels of unconvincing.

Define "on par."

Able to contribute to party success as much as the full caster, artificer, or paladin

So if the cleric isn't Twilight + doesn't have Aura of Life and the Sorcerer didn't land their banish, the party doesn't succeed? At all? That seems hella specific/swingy to me.

I'm simply making an assessment of what the most noticeable and flashy moves in the combat were. Maybe we succeed anyway, even if the cleric decides to only cast spiritual weapon and cantrip the whole time. But if the cleric and sorcerer are overshadowing the barb and the rogue on the regular...like that's my point.

What the person you just said you disagree with was advocating for which you said, again, you disagree with is giving martials a way other than 'raining magic items' on them to be relevant. He is saying the game SHOULD have martials who can generate their own temp hp round-by-round because they are that tough, or who can tame and ride a flying steed that they can keep alive to fight in the sky, or who can inhale the vampire in gasseous form to grapple him despite his form being nothing he can get a grip on, and keep it imprisoned until it dies or surrenders.

I can't forensic the thread to know exactly who said what and who's disagreeing with whom; I just stepped in to say Coolness is on my mind when it comes to balance, and as evidence, I talked about my barb character who despite having a ton of great items is pretty replacement level.

Segev

2024-07-17, 05:57 PM

My point was that you expressed disagreement with the notion that martials should be able to do cool things, and then presented as evidence that you were right to disagree a barbarian who can't do cool things without magic items, which you are painfully aware of and express disappointment in.

So the exchange looked akin to:

Person A: "I think martials should be able to do cool things that stand up compared to casters at night level!"

You: "No, they shouldn't. Take my barbarian, for example, who has lots of cool magic items that keep him relevant. Even with them, I am aware that he is borrowing his power and it doesn't feel as satisfying, since I know it is the casters who arehe real lynch pins of the party."

Skrum

2024-07-17, 06:20 PM

So the exchange looked akin to:

Person A: "I think martials should be able to do cool things that stand up compared to casters at night level!"

I'm not gonna say you misunderstood me 'cause I can't very well tell how clear I was being or how the timing of my post on this longass thread changed the meaning.

But I can assure you now with 100% sincerity that's not what I meant. My thoughts are thus
1) I think martials relying on items to close the gap with casters is poor game design. Classes should be balanced, and then separately from that, the DM is free to add items to the mix or not
2) items are awesome and getting them as rewards in games in one of my favorite things
3) my barb character is relevant - but still less important and less flashy than the better classes
4) I really like my character, despite him working from a deficit. I can both enjoy playing the character and be clear-eyed about his role in the party
5) I mentioned his items to dispel any notion that he didn't have game-suggested itemization (and thus that's why he's not as good as the cleric). He in fact has better items than most tables would award, I expect

Psyren

2024-07-17, 07:07 PM

I stand by what I said originally; as the game progresses beyond 6th level, martial classes have less and less opportunity to do cool things. Your examples were varying levels of unconvincing.

What would "cool" look like for a martial to you?

Able to contribute to party success as much as the full caster, artificer, or paladin

How do you measure that? If the full caster paralyzes a monster for one round, but the Barbarian is the one who rolls the double-greataxe-GWM-autocrits that kill it during that round, which one contributed more?

Which matters more - being "noticeable and flashy," or contributing?

GeneralVryth

2024-07-17, 07:12 PM

I'm not gonna say you misunderstood me 'cause I can't very well tell how clear I was being or how the timing of my post on this longass thread changed the meaning.

1. Relying on items is literally what the Artificer does, and more generally every class but the Monk (and certain Barb/Fighter builds) relies on items. It's not bad game design at all. What you mean is relying on items the PC can acquire without DM aid. And while I agree, a non-cooperative DM causes more problems than this.
3. Debatable. Have you observed how the party works without your Barb? What about without one of the casters. Also, comparing coolness (which is the thing, since you are talking about effectiveness) to one of the most overpowered caster options in the game (Twilight Cleric), isn't the best comparison.
5. Almost all of your items are about boosting your numbers, you don't have many versatility increasing items. Also, those shortswords are quite powerful for level 10.

Skrum

2024-07-17, 09:27 PM

Artificers gets items as their class features. They might be expressed as items, but I would call those class features.

3. Debatable. Have you observed how the party works without your Barb? What about without one of the casters. Also, comparing coolness (which is the thing, since you are talking about effectiveness) to one of the most overpowered caster options in the game (Twilight Cleric), isn't the best comparison.

I've played this character in 30 games. I see what I see lol. Not sure what else there is to say about that
And granted, Twilight Cleric is totally busted. But IME, when casters reach 7th level (giving them access to 4th level spells as well as giving them quite a few spells lots to play with), the game bends towards them.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-17, 09:58 PM

Artificers gets items as their class features. They might be expressed as items, but I would call those class features.

I was referring to things as basic as mundane armor, weapons and spell components. They are still items. The only difference is the player agency in acquiring them. Which as I said earlier I do wish there was some player agency in acquiring magical items built in.

I am not advocating magical items as a purely DM based balance fix. I am advocating for them as a way a badass normal character can access the range of effects that narratively should only be accessible to powered characters. Balance is related but not the only aspect of this.

That's fair. But often people don't notice the impact of something until it's not there. And since presumably you always play your character when available you may not notice your impact as much as that of another character.

Kane0

2024-07-17, 11:06 PM

But IME, when casters reach 7th level (giving them access to 4th level spells as well as giving them quite a few spells lots to play with), the game bends towards them.

One solution i came up with was to gut spell slots for each spell level. Casters instead get only two sets of spell slots that both automatically scale like pact magic does. Major slots are the higher spell level and come back on a long rest, minor slots are the lower spell level and come back on a short rest.

Skrum

2024-07-18, 12:09 AM

I have oft considered if the game wouldn't be better if every class was SR based. Something like 1 spell of their highest level, 1 of the next lower, and then 3 of the next after that. Replenishing on a SR. And that's all the slots they get.

It would certainly solve the 5MWD problem.

Schwann145

2024-07-18, 12:33 AM

We'll eventually just reduce all casters into slotless cantrip spammers. That'll really solve the problem.

Psyren

2024-07-18, 01:36 AM

We'll eventually just reduce all casters into slotless cantrip spammers. That'll really solve the problem.

In addition to the spammable, or "at-will" cantrips, we could give them a few spells they can use once in every fight, or "encounter" if you will, plus a few bombs they can call on once per day. We can call these "dailies."

Kane0

2024-07-18, 02:35 AM

It would certainly solve the 5MWD problem.

Thats essentially the direction im taking, as opposed to all the prof times per long rest that 5e24 seems to be going. There are still some per-long-rest items of course, but the majority of each class wont be tied to those.

Skrum

2024-07-18, 07:57 AM

We'll eventually just reduce all casters into slotless cantrip spammers. That'll really solve the problem.

I mean the other way is possible too; triple the uses of SR resources and change them all to LR (I feel this would take more adjustment of specific abilities to work correctly though).

The problem is some classes get all of their resources up front, and some get their resources forcible rationed behind SRs. This puts an obvious pressure to run a certain schedule of encounters and rests. A totally unnecessary burden, when classes could instead just be designed to work on similar rest schedules.

Theodoxus

2024-07-18, 08:27 AM

Ah man, that sounds dreamy. I hope some 3rd party company picks up that idea and runs with it!

I do wish there was a vibrant any 4th edition community in my area. My local group in the early 2000s was playing PF and while I bought the core books for 4th, no one wanted to switch at the time, and then 5E came out and people went nuts for it.

Amnestic

2024-07-18, 09:35 AM

It wouldn't be that hard to make all spellcasters primarily short rest based.

They get one slot of each level at the same levels for 1-5 that refreshes on a short rest, and 6-9 are still 1/LR. If you're getting 2SRs per LR, it amounts to basically the same amount as if they were all LR based. A number changes here and there (Full caster has one fewer 1st, one more 5th) but overall? Essentially the same numbers.

Kane0

2024-07-18, 11:00 AM

It wouldn't be that hard to make all spellcasters primarily short rest based.

Then you still have that basic problem of casters getting quadratic progression, number of spells and power of spells. The most radical part of my idea was limiting that number of and focusing on the power of in terms of level scaling.
The biggest ramification ive seen thus far is a much greater emphasis placed on upcasting, since once you start hitting those higher levels you dont have 1st level slots to burn on healing word or shield, they're 2nd or 3rd or even 4th level slots that compete very heavily so you want the absolute most bang for your buck even if those spell slots come back on a short rest.

KorvinStarmast

2024-07-18, 11:03 AM

I get that there are people who don't want to play a game in a fantasy world. What I don't get is why they want to play a game that's set in a fantasy world as if it's not in a fantasy world. Genre blur is a thing. See also expedition to the Barrier Peaks and the Temple of the Frog. The original game was based on Swords and Sorcery, and magic swords were a key pillar of that game. The expectation was that you would go out treasure hunting, even though it may cost you your life, to find stuff like that and to find spells to put into your spell book. It worked.

But personally, I LOVE finding magic items. Likewise. It's a part of the reason to go adventuring.

Yes, absolutely it does.

[QUOTE=warty goblin;26044589]If you wanna wizard on Krynn (at least Ansalon) you gotta take the Test, or get hunted down as a renegade. And while what happened to Raistlin is extreme, the books are clear that the Test messes up everyone to a degree, permanent injuries do not seem terribly uncommon. It's rather the purpose, to keep the riffraff out. Schedules Standards must be maintained, even in Columbia Krynn. :smallcool:

Theodoxus

2024-07-18, 11:19 AM

My solution was to offer up spell points to Warlocks, granting them the granularity to cast multiple first level spells as they leveled up. Some players appreciated it, others didn't like the bookkeeping (go figure). It wasn't mandatory though.

It would be the easiest solution though, since you could curtail the number of spell points to the campaign. Higher powered campaigns would allow for more points, lower, fewer; and there's no headache about how many slots and where they're coming from - other than the initial conversion, which can totally be a solo DM decision based on how they see the campaign's magic working.

Psyren

2024-07-18, 12:02 PM

Ah man, that sounds dreamy. I hope some 3rd party company picks up that idea and runs with it!

Wasn't Legend trying to continue the 4e framework for the folks who liked it? Whatever happened to that?

Amnestic

2024-07-18, 12:21 PM

Oh, 100%, it wasn't meant to be something that addresses the wider caster/martial stuff, just the long rest focused-ness that most casters have that martials have less of (but still have some).

The biggest ramification ive seen thus far is a much greater emphasis placed on upcasting, since once you start hitting those higher levels you dont have 1st level slots to burn on healing word or shield, they're 2nd or 3rd or even 4th level slots that compete very heavily so you want the absolute most bang for your buck even if those spell slots come back on a short rest.

Yeah for sure, it'd definitely morph spell selection options. That might be fine though! Might even be desirable. Shield is oft-complained about, after all.

It's not a houserule I plan to implement any time soon, but I - personally - imagine the game would be healthier for it.

...you'd probably need to put barbarian rages on a short rest too though. Don't want them feeling left out.

Psyren

2024-07-18, 12:35 PM

GeneralVryth

2024-07-18, 12:36 PM

That's not actually quadratic progression. Quadratic progression would require all spells slots to get more powerful as you level up, which isn't the case. Only the new slots are more powerful relative to the old ones. In fact the closest thing 5e has to a quadratic power increase is Fighters, as they get more attacks and all of them get stronger.

Also, it kind of goes without saying your idea is dumb, and I would be amazed if you had player subject themselves to playing a caster in your campaign.

TaiLiu

2024-07-18, 01:41 PM

Slightly off-topic, but...

And yes, some classes being weaker and relying on the DM to balance them with loot is bad design. It's not really a matter of a cooperative DM or not; it's about a player having as much choice and agency in building their character as the player sitting next to them, and also not asking the DM to do class balance on the fly.
Absolutely. I wanna focus on the villains and their nefarious plots and conflict in the world and see how my players' characters deal with that. As a GM, I really shouldn't be worried about intra-party balance or making sure this character has a particular magic item and whatnot. Or even whether or not the characters are getting enough rests. Those things suck and take a lot of time and energy.

Psyren

2024-07-18, 03:44 PM

Slightly off-topic, but...

Absolutely. I wanna focus on the villains and their nefarious plots and conflict in the world and see how my players' characters deal with that. As a GM, I really shouldn't be worried about intra-party balance or making sure this character has a particular magic item and whatnot. Or even whether or not the characters are getting enough rests. Those things suck and take a lot of time and energy.

I mean for me it's pretty simple. Do my players feel like intra-party balance is a problem?

- If no, no time or energy needed. And I genuinely think this is the most common scenario except on theory forums.

- On the rare occasion the answer is yes, I'll have a chat with them about what they think needs to be done. Do the martials need better items or more attunements? If so I can do that. Do they think the casters need to tone it down a bit? We'll talk about that. Is it a specific spell or spells I need to ban? Okay.

Either way I don't see it taking all that much of my "time and energy." It takes way more to argue about it online than to fix it at a table imo.

Rafaelfras

2024-07-18, 04:09 PM

I disagree, with both the premise and the conclusion.
It's not bad design that magic items will have a different impact on a class by its very nature. A class that uses weapons as it's primary source of damage will benefit itself immensely more from that kind of loot by definition. It's a feature of the game and help to differentiate classes further.

You are not required to balance the game on the fly. Give loot to your party, all of it and that's it. Balance will come by itself.

Also gold exists, rules to buy magic itens (and thus increasing players agency) exists.
Loot is part of the game and it is part of the DM job

Silverblade1234

2024-07-18, 04:38 PM

I wanna focus on the villains and their nefarious plots and conflict in the world and see how my players' characters deal with that. As a GM, I really shouldn't be worried about intra-party balance or making sure this character has a particular magic item and whatnot. Or even whether or not the characters are getting enough rests. Those things suck and take a lot of time and energy.

Do they take a lot, though? I find it pretty trivial to keep track of general player satisfaction and contentment. "Oh hey, the last dungeon my fighter ended up with a weapon that boosted his damage, so I should probably give something to my monk next so he doesn't feel left behind." Or, "my fighter is really leaning into his religion, I should find some way to reward that with a boon or holy relic." Unless you're doing treasure solely via randomness, or just don't do rewards at all, surely this already occurs as part of your thought process for what to offer or not offer? Even if you're doing rewards purely based on context, you still have to do some thought about which rewards are available within that context, and a part of that must be about party fit and desirability, right?

Kane0

2024-07-18, 04:54 PM

Yeah I keep Pact Magic for Warlocks to keep them unique, and give spell points to sorcerers for their unique thing. They become the only caster able to fine-tune their expenditure in such a way which I find sells the concept of flexibility within the limited spells they know.

It's not a houserule I plan to implement any time soon, but I - personally - imagine the game would be healthier for it.

...you'd probably need to put barbarian rages on a short rest too though. Don't want them feeling left out.

Indeed. Barb Rage, Bard Inspiration, Cleric/Pally Channels, Druid Shape, Ranger Mark are all twice per short rest which become three times per short rest in Tier 4. Fighters, Monks and Locks also get their normal short rest stuff.

Eh, I'd much rather have what they went with - the mix of LR and SR classes are still there, but now everyone gets something back on a SR, and for days when a SR is hard to come by the SR-based classes have an emergency refill button as well as better stuff they can do without spending those resources. (Weren't a bunch of y'all deathly opposed to perceived hom*ogenization?)
All casters barring the Sorc and Lock get both SR and LR casting built-in, so that's already 50% of classes before I go into detail on all the other changes i've made. The SRs themselves I make a little easier to accomplish by some means (Bard Song of Rest, Catnap spell, the Durable feat, a few select magic items, etc). Overall the shift of overall abundance from LR stuff to SR stuff allows me to more effectively combat the 5MWD in my games, thus far at least.

Also, it kind of goes without saying your idea is dumb, and I would be amazed if you had player subject themselves to playing a caster in your campaign.

No, you get more lower level slots as you progress as well as unlocking those higher level slots. Those lower level slots do not diminish in usefulness since you can swap from spells like burning hands to absorb elements or keep using spells that remain always useful like pass without trace or silence. You are gaining more powerful options AND more of them, where other features/systems rarely if ever give you both concurrently. The exponential growth is not nearly as severe as it was in 3.X, but it is still exponential.

Your opinion is noted. I should specify that I'm not nerfing casters and calling it a day. In exchange for that spellcasting they get class features.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-18, 05:48 PM

Your opinion is noted. I should specify that I'm not nerfing casters and calling it a day. In exchange for that spellcasting they get class features.

Then I will reserve judgement. But unless the class features do a lot, only 2 spells per short rest is going to significantly warp caster gameplay. And probably eliminate the usage of most non-concentration spells.

The only times when progressing spell slots that you get slots of different levels is 3 and 9. And the your right the lower level slots don't really lose power, but they don't gain any either (other than the way buffs/debuffs/control spells tend to scale with their target). It's not exponential or quadratic growth. The most apt phrase is quasilinear or loglinear. No level 20 character in 5e14 is putting out 400 times the damage of a level 1 character (besides maybe simulacrum abuse, yet another reason that spell doesn't exist in my games), which would be quadratic growth. Even looking at tiers (which is more accurate for power comparisons) Tier 4 characters very rarely are putting out 16 times the damage of tier 1 characters. And exponential well... even with a base as low as 2, no level 20 character is putting out 1,000,000+ the power of a level 1 character.

TaiLiu

2024-07-18, 07:34 PM

I mean for me it's pretty simple. Do my players feel like intra-party balance is a problem?

- If no, no time or energy needed. And I genuinely think this is the most common scenario except on theory forums.

Either way I don't see it taking all that much of my "time and energy." It takes way more to argue about it online than to fix it at a table imo.
That's great. I'm happy for you. And you're right that the correct way to address it is clear and careful communication. :smallsmile:

Unfortunately, part of the problem I've experienced is that players aren't conscious of their feelings of intra-party imbalance. Nonetheless, they act on it, resentment builds up, and tables fall apart. (The GM version is unconscious feelings of PVE imbalance, which is a different conversation.) Nothing special in the history of human social encounters, but I don't think it's unreasonable to want to sidestep all that when playing a game.

Player characters are welcome to express their wants and welcome to seek out magic items, of course. But I can't read their minds and accurately make guesses about who feels left behind and who wants to be rewarded for certain activities.

If the game doesn't need magic items, then I don't consider them; and if the game does need them, then I need better guidelines from D&D 5e for placing and distributing them, cuz I'm not a natural-born GM and won't know intuitively.

Psyren

2024-07-18, 08:28 PM

Even when players are bad at articulating their feelings though, to me it's pretty obvious while you're playing a game with someone whether they're having fun or not. Especially if you just got through a combat where one player utterly dominated and the rest were standing there holding their bags. The funny thing for me though is that that's much more likely to happen with the 2014 Paladin melting a boss with triple-digit Smite numbers, or the 2014 Monk getting lucky with repeated stunlocks turning the enemy into drooling punching bags, than it is for casters.

Kane0

2024-07-18, 09:20 PM

Thats why the caster should cast Flame Arrows for the ranger
/s

TaiLiu

2024-07-18, 10:27 PM

I'm not saying the scenario where C/MD is a huge problem at your table yet it goes unnoticed to the point that the game quietly implodes can't ever happen. Almost anything can. But do I think that outcome is common enough to justify ripping out the entire existing casting framework - not even remotely.
Unfortunately, its not obvious for me. Thats why Im such a big fan of the rise of formal safety tools. It gives us an instrument to address boundaries and comfort zones.

I have no comments on ripping out the existing casting framework or whether martials show up casters or vice versa. My comments pretty off-topic from what the threads about. :smalltongue:

Psyren

2024-07-19, 12:12 AM

I'm a big fan of safety tools, but that's not really what I mean. I'm more referring to basic gameplay stuff like "did that combat encounter have the impact I expected it to have."

schm0

2024-07-19, 08:29 AM

XG discusses the philosophy of magic items and also provides instructions and guidelines for placing and distributing them as you describe. I use these rules in my own campaigns and I couldn't be happier, as they let me know more or less what level that knob is turned to at any given time, and I can plan out treasure and distribution of items ahead of time.

According to the designers, the game only needs magic items if you are facing monsters with resistance to non-magical damage AND you have no way of dealing magical damage in other ways:

Magic items can go from nice to necessary in the rare group that has no spellcasters, no monk, and no NPCs capable of casting magic weapon. Having no magic makes it extremely difficult for a party to overcome monsters that have resistances or immunity to nonmagical damage. In such a game, you'll want to be generous with magic weapons or else avoid using such monsters.

So you can absolutely run a game without magic items if you remove those creatures OR at least one of your party is capable of doing damage. It probably won't be a very fun campaign, IMHO, but you can do it.

Magic items are not "required" to balance martials, but they can help them contribute to combat more effectively and potentially give them more things to do. That's a good thing.

Dr.Samurai

2024-07-19, 08:54 AM

...you'd probably need to put barbarian rages on a short rest too though. Don't want them feeling left out.
https://y.yarn.co/67a7df09-816e-4ffc-8264-453c121b84b7_text.gif

With regards to magic items... honestly, adventuring for money that... really can't be used for much and no magic items because... "you don't need them" is lame in my opinion. So then it's just XP, which means you're just adventuring to learn Indomitable 1/day or Brutal Critical while casters are getting 5th level spells lol.

Atranen

2024-07-19, 09:45 AM

Magic items are not "required" to balance martials, but they can help them contribute to combat more effectively and potentially give them more things to do. That's a good thing.

I understand this is how the designers see it, but it's one of their big misunderstandings ime. Resistance to nonmagic is just too much of a swing. "Creatures with resistance to nonmagical damage" are abundant at higher CRs, so you have to strip the majority of monsters from the game. Or have the right spellcasters with the right spells use their concentration slots. If you don't do that, than characters like the fighter, whose entire deal is direct damage, end up doing less than half of that while the remaining characters are just as effective. It's not fun to be playing those fighters, and if every combat is like that, they are going to be very weak.

schm0

2024-07-19, 10:12 AM

I wouldn't say it's a misunderstanding. Quite the opposite. They state quite plainly that they designed the game with the expectation that players receive magic items and weapons so the things you and I described don't happen. Obviously they put resistance to non-magical damage on those monsters, etc. with the expectation that at least some of the players would overcome that. But at the same time they also understood not every campaign or DM is going to want to run things the same way. So for the DMs who want to craft a world where magic items are extremely rare, for instance, or if a DM wanted to limit their campaign to martials only, that type of world or campaign is possible, but it comes at a pretty significant cost and with some serious concerns as it pertains to balance.

Amnestic

2024-07-19, 10:32 AM

Typically I'd expect non-magic weapon resistance to crop up for NPC assistance/summons more than player characters. By the time it becomes commonplace, I'd assume the 2-3 physical fighters on a team would have appropriate weapons, but if a caster Dominates a person to make them fight their friend? Or they Summon a Beast? It'll probably be an issue there. Your local necromancer with a trail of skeleton friends is unlikely to have enough magic weapons to outfit all of his dancing troupe with them, at least for a while (and usually if you do have enough, you'll be looking to sell them to buy other magic stuff for your main player characters anyway).

Between monk and moon druid 6th level features, it certainly seems like the designers intended for physical attackers to be hitting magically early tier 2, if not even sooner.

Atranen

2024-07-19, 10:47 AM

I had in mind the rest of that sidebar:

The D&D game is built on the assumption that magic items appear sporadically and that they are always a boon, unless an item bears a curse. Characters and monsters are built to face each other without the help of magic items, which means that having a magic item always makes a character more powerful or versatile than a generic character of the same level. As DM, you never have to worry about awarding magic items just so the characters can keep up with the campaign's threats. Magic items are truly prizes. Are they useful? Absolutely. Are they necessary? No.

The claim "characters and monsters are built to face each other without the help of magic items" and "you never have to worry about awarding magic items just so the characters can keep up with the campaign's threats" are incorrect in my experience. The game does seem to expect you to have magic items; a monk and a wizard using concentration on magic weapon every encounter can help, but require specific circ*mstances and make the game much less fun.

I'd prefer to just double the hp on everything having resistance to nonmagic, and make the monsters with resistances more unique (i.e., need a special type of weapon like silver, not just 'magic').

schm0

2024-07-19, 11:06 AM

I had in mind the rest of that sidebar:

I'd prefer to just double the hp on everything having resistance to nonmagic, and make the monsters with resistances more unique (i.e., need a special type of weapon like silver, not just 'magic').

Yep, I'm very familiar with the section of XG and that quote in particular. The fact is that non-magic resistance to BPS is already factored into the defensive CR and thus the overall difficulty of a creature. It's right in the DMG monster creation instructions, in fact:

Giving a monster resistances and immunities to three or more damage types (especially bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage) is like giving it extra hit points. However, adventurers have more resources at higher levels to counteract such defenses, making resistances and immunities less relevant at higher levels.

Effective Hit Points.

If a monster has resistance or immunity to several damage types especially bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons and not all the characters in the party possess the means to counteract that resistance or immunity, you need to take these defenses into account when comparing your monster's hit points to its expected challenge rating. Using the Effective Hit Points Based on Resistances and Immunities table, apply the appropriate multiplier to the monster's hit points to determine its effective hit points for the purpose of gauging its final challenge rating. (The monster's actual hit points shouldn't change.)

For example, a monster with an expected challenge rating of 6, 150 hit points, and resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons effectively has 225 hit points (using the 1.5 multiplier for resistances) for the purpose of gauging its final challenge rating.

So if you are adding more hit points to the creature and removing those resistances, you are just doing effectively what was already there in the first place.

Atranen

2024-07-19, 11:24 AM

So if you are adding more hit points to the creature and removing those resistances, you are just doing effectively what was already there in the first place.

I agree the designers factored it into their CR calculations, but I think it's widely acknowledged those are not particularly good or meaningful.

It is not the case that adding more HP and removing the resistances effectively does what was there in the first place. The important thing is how much damage classes do relative to each other. For example, if a fighter does 100% damage each round, and the wizard does 60% (in exchange for substantial utility), and the fighter is doing b/p/s and the wizard fire or cold, then the resistance has a massive role. The presence of the resistance will take the fighter damage down to 50%--worse than the wizard, when the fighter was built for damage and the wizard built for control.

Rather than party of specialists, you end up with one where the fighter is just worse at everything than characters with a way to bypass the resistance.

The problem with the resistances isn't that it makes monsters in general too hard or too easy--you can just use different monsters. It's that it skews the party's internal balance to an extent that some classes are not fun to play.

schm0

2024-07-19, 11:49 AM

I agree the designers factored it into their CR calculations, but I think it's widely acknowledged those are not particularly good or meaningful.

The math itself may be slightly off here and there (I'm sure someone could pull out a creature that serves as a good example), but more or less the general principles for creating monsters are intact and serve as a decent guide, albeit imperfect. I use both the monster creation tools and the CR encounter guidelines (with the adventuring day as the gold standard for my adventure design) and everything pretty much works itself out.

Rather than party of specialists, you end up with one where the fighter is just worse at everything than characters with a way to bypass the resistance.

What you are claiming here would hold more weight if there weren't a similar number of monsters with legendary resistance or magic resistance (or in a few rare cases, spell immunity!) The fact is that some creatures can shut down casters easier than they can the martials, simply by saying "no" to spells or by gaining advantage on all saves against magic. There are other less common abilities that affect mostly casters, such as a demilich's avoidance (take no damage if forced to take half damage on a successful save) or damage absorption (see flesh golem) or even things as simple as invisibility shutting down a whole slew of spells.

warty goblin

2024-07-19, 12:10 PM

As I recall, the big excitement about the way 5e does magic items at release wasn't that you didn't need any magic loot ever in a standard game. That's a kinda weird thing to design a fantasy adventure game around as a default, magic loot is cool and most people want it. It's that, compared to 3e, you didn't have to hand out an ever-escalating conveyer belt of fancier stuff with higher and higher bonuses, so magic stuff felt not so much rare and cool and wonderous as just another expected aspect of your character's ever-balooning numbers. In 5e the fighter might need a magic sword to work well, but he only really needs the one, which can be a cool and flavorful item, rather than some optimized custom monstrosity that will get replaced in two or four levels anyway.

It's a moderate position in other words. Some magic items, not zero, and not full 3e Christmas Tree. Works well in practice because it's forgiving in both directions, but very poor for online discussions.

Atranen

2024-07-19, 12:35 PM

Sure, but casters aren't as reliant on save-or-suck as martials are on damage. They can do summons, they can buff their allies, they can sculpt the battlefield, they can use effects which are generally not worth using LR on, like spirit guardians. Wall of Force and magic missile are still good. If they're fiends, clerics have a ton of options specifically designed to combat them.

The martial characters are much more one-note, which makes it worse for their damage to be cut in half.

Yeah, I remember this too. It just turned out "never need magical loot ever" became "don't need anything except a magic weapon at levels 6+".

Psyren

2024-07-19, 12:52 PM

You don't need magic weapons most of the time, - but combat without them at high levels will likely be extremely tedious, due to damage resistances and lots and lots of misses.

Pex

2024-07-19, 04:28 PM

I was wondering if this topic would come up. Not needing magic items in 5E is not the same thing as they shouldn't exist at all. It only means you don't need any one specific item to keep up with the math of the game. PCs are supposed to have magic items. They don't need to clean out the mall, but it is far from a bare warehouse. The game does not fall apart because PC have magic items, have magic items that are continuous use (not just consumables), and have magic items that are continuous use (not just consumables) that are meant to be used in combat. As for magic weapons, no warrior PC needs any specific published ink on paper magic weapon, but when as DM you are ready for the warrior PC to have a magic weapon it should be in the form the PC likes. If he's been using Great Weapon Master since forever you give him a great sword, not a short sword. If he likes Pole Arm Master he gets a magical glaive or halberd, not a rapier. If he's been fighting long sword and shield you give him a long sword not a dagger.

Speaking of daggers, when a Patron NPC is to reward each PC a magic item for a job well done promising it's something nice each PC can use, you don't give the wizard/sorcerer who's been hanging in the back flinging spells a magical dagger. I'm not demanding any one particular item, just something he would want to use commensurate in power to what you gave everyone else in the party. Neither a magical light crossbow when he's been casting Firebolt all day. In other ranting from experience words, you don't give the spellcaster a magic weapon! (warrior-type clerics accepted)

Skrum

2024-07-19, 06:05 PM

I'm deeply skeptical of this. I've said in multiple threads that I think casters start to noticeably pull ahead of martials around level 7 *but* martials can keep up for several more levels if they get good magic items.

What do I mean by good magic items? Well, at a baseline they need +X weapon that adds damage to each hit. For instance, a +1 greatsword that adds 1d6 acid damage per hit. A defensive item is very nice, ideally something that boosts their saves or gives a common condition immunity or damage resistance, something like that. And movement. Movement is incredibly important for similar reasons that initiative is important (I think people tend to underrate or overlook this).

I think it's obvious why a defensive and movement item is good, but why do I think the weapon is so important? Well weapon damage doesn't scale. Not the way spells scale. Fighters are the only martial class that comes anywhere close to what I would call appropriate scaling. Rogues scale, but poorly. Rangers and barbs, basically not at all. Monks do get better as they go up, but they start from such a deficit they still don't close the gap. And none of them keep up with monster HP.

Example -
A generic level 5 barb with 18 str, a great axe, rage, and constant adv (either reckless attack or flanking) attacks an average CR 5 creature (15 AC, 85 HP)

Deals: 23.2 DPR. It would take the barb 3.66 turns to drop the creature

Same everything, but now at level 10. The barb now has 20 str. A CR 10 creature has AC 17 and 160 hit points

Deals: 26.23 DPR. It would take the barb 6.09 turns to drop the creature

I've posted about this lack of scaling before, particularly as it applies to barbarians. But this is a problem. The barb is getting WORSE as they gain levels, relative to the more dangerous enemies they will face. But let's say the level 10 barb has a +2 great axe that adds 1d6 force damage per hit -

Deals: 38.84 DPR. It would take the barb 4.12 rounds to drop the creature. Still worse than the 5th level barb, but certainly in the ballpark.

I really don't think the developers consider this, and honestly anyone who says martial classes don't "need" magic items, I just assume they're not playing a combat-focused game.

Rafaelfras

2024-07-19, 08:33 PM

When I was rolling for loot for the BBEG dragon from Storm king Thunder I got a Holy Avenger, but we didn't had a paladin on our group at that time. I was ready to roll for something else, but I decided to keep it.
It went to our cleric and I decided that he could use it fully and apply his Wis for attack and damage with it. Turn out that our cleric was a big fan of the holy avenger, as it was his favorite weapon on D&D and this made him absurdly happy.
The wizard got a staff of power from the same loot, and killing the dragon made the flame tongue weapon of our fighter go from +1 to +2 and be able to change from fire to lightning in it's damage.
That was a dragon worth killing.

Psyren

2024-07-19, 08:39 PM

I'm not denying what you've seen at your table... but you've admitted in past threads that your table is relatively high in difficulty and caster power, so it makes sense martials would fall behind more quickly for you. The degree to which that applies to most people is something that I'm not as convinced of.

Example -
A generic level 5 barb barb with 18 str, a great axe, rage, and constant adv (either reckless attack or flanking) attacks an average CR 5 creature (15 AC, 85 HP)

Deals: 23.2 DPR. It would take the barb 3.66 turns to drop the creature

Same everything, but now at level 10. The barb now has 20 str. A CR 10 creature has AC 17 and 160 hit points

Deals: 26.23 DPR. It would take the barb 6.09 turns to drop the creature

Uh... does that barb not have any feats? And did it forget to pick a subclass? Wouldn't a "combat-focused game" include those things?

As GWM, PAM, and Charger or Sentinel are half-feats now, I'd actually be okay with 19 Str at level 10 if it mean getting two of them, finishing up with all three for 20 Str at 12. Treantmonk's calculation at 13 landed at 58.3 DPR (And note that he's targeting 19 AC at that level, and ignoring any reaction attacks) so he ended up with more than double what you have in just 3 levels, and he didn't use Charger either.

Skrum

2024-07-19, 10:21 PM

Fair enough! I do play in a very combat-focused game, and there's no denying it's a caster-friendly place (simply because of rest schedule). That said, martials falling off is martials falling off; if they're performing relatively worse against CR-equal threats as they go up in level, I don't see how to interpret that any other way but as an indictment of class design.

Uh... does that barb not have any feats? And did it forget to pick a subclass? Wouldn't a "combat-focused game" include those things?

I just had 'em boost ASI's to keep it simple. The damage of charger and sentinel doesn't calculate cleanly as they're situational things, so I'd prefer to just stick to PAM and GWM (how/why are we mix and matching '14 feats with '24 feats? Didn't '24 get rid of GWM and PAM, at least in their current iterations?).

TCL level 5 barb with 17 str, PAM, GWM, rage active, using GWM, and attacking at adv against a AC 15 creature with 85 hit points
DPR: 38.1 (including an approx. of the damage added from the extra attack on crit from GWM). 2.2 rounds to drop

Same barb, but now level 10 and with 19 str. Rest the same. Creature is AC 17 with 160 hit points
DPR: 41.5. 3.8 rounds to drop. Not as bad as before! But still noticeably worse than level 5

w/ +2 weapon that add 1d6 damage per hit
DPR: 63.06. 2.5 rounds to drop

==========

I mean, the numbers are different but I interpret them to the same conclusion. Especially with TCL, the barb can grab the two most meaningful feats by level 5, and then after that it's just increasing str (that's really just serving to keep up with AC increases). The class itself adds virtually nothing. A +2 weapon that adds 1d6 though? That IMO bumps the barb right back to where it should be.

TaiLiu

2024-07-19, 11:46 PM

I'm a big fan of safety tools, but that's not really what I mean. I'm more referring to basic gameplay stuff like "did that combat encounter have the impact I expected it to have."

Though if you're in favor of safety tools then frankly this should be even easier - those provide a framework for regularly checking in on the players and how they feel about the campaign's subject matter. If you have the time and energy for that, seeing if a player felt overshadowed in the last fight shouldn't be much of an additional lift.
Oh. Yeah, you can make guesses about that stuff pretty easily. That's not a problem I have. Though players interpret combat encounters differently than I would, of course. I remember one combat that I thought was pretty fair, but one of the players felt that they were being specially targeted. One of us should've brought it up for further discussion, but that never happened.

Which safety tool are you thinking of? Cuz I don't think either the x-card or lines and veils do that, and those are the tools I'm most familiar with.

I'd also politely request that you stop using should rhetoric with me. I know it's not intentional, but it's mean and makes me feel like I don't have some mystery quality that GMs need. Whether something should be simple or easy or be minimally difficult has no bearing on whether that's true for me. I just want to weave a story together with my friends and for doing that I would like better tools or better documentation for tools.

GeneralVryth

2024-07-20, 12:55 AM

Same barb, but now level 10 and with 19 str. Rest the same. Creature is AC 17 with 160 hit points
DPR: 41.5. 3.8 rounds to drop. Not as bad as before! But still noticeably worse than level 5

w/ +2 weapon that add 1d6 damage per hit
DPR: 63.06. 2.5 rounds to drop

==========

You talk about this scaling phenomenon as if it's unique to martials. It's not.

Do the same process with an Evoker Wizard (lore wise the quintessential damage caster) and you get (assuming only a 40% save rate):

Level 5 Evoker (using 1 Fireball, and then firebolt spam):
28*.6 + 14*.4 = 22.4 for the fireball
11*.65 + 11*.05 = 7.7 for the firebolts
~9.13 rounds to drop

Level 10 Evoker (using 1 Cone of Cold, then 1 Fireball, and then firebolt spam):
36*.6 + 36*.4 = 28.8 for the Cone of Cold
22.4 for the fireball
16*.65 + 16*.05 = 11.2 for the firebolts
~10.82 rounds to drop

Now obviously things change at 11, but that is true for every class.

Blatant Beast

2024-07-20, 02:11 AM

They can do that with a Vorpal sword and a lucky blade.

That is not a class feature, that is loot. I play a 19th level Fighter, and the Elven Artillerist has a Vorpal Blade from a shop's random table that was in the Spelljammer book. The 19th level Artificer has better AC, because they have Infusions, can easily have two attacks per Turn with Haste, and outright kill things with lucky rolls, just the same as my Fighter, (whom has a Vorpal Like weapon as well).

The parity, you suggest, actually depends upon the DM opening up the Goodie Room, and giving you optimal stuff...which is not always going to happen. Even if the DM does open up the Goodie Room: A small chance to potentially kill NON-LEGENDARY Creatures with a Vorpal Blade is just not on the same level as the Wish spell.

Which is a key difference. The Magic-User acquiring the Wish spell also used to require the DM to open the Goodie Room, but not in 5e.

You can thank the video games for that.

Nah, it is deeper than that. Playing a 1st level monk in 1e AD&D just sucked. One could not even throw burning oil flasks at foes, and you were expected to go in and melee in your underoos, with a d4 hit dice.

It felt like playing a drain on the party's resources, and in effect you were. You needed your team to carry you, until you could "Get Good", tens of thousands of Experience Points latter.

It just was not fun. Video Games did not make you feel that, not being able to really produce results is the cause of the feeling.

My Fighter, that I referenced above, has been more than willing to Grapple, and Shove, and combo off with my party-mates, but even though my now 19th level Fighter has a Belt of Frost Giant Strength, I simply can not Grapple that much because of the hard fast rules on what size of creature can Grapple what.

Why can't a medium sized creature with Strength of 20 and above try to grapple a Huge monster, even if there was a size penalty? Realism? That is a bad reason.

Video Game designs over time might have increased people's expectation of how much they can contribute, but frankly D&D's design also needs to keep pace.

https://y.yarn.co/67a7df09-816e-4ffc-8264-453c121b84b7_text.gif
With regards to magic items... honestly, adventuring for money that... really can't be used for much and no magic items because... "you don't need them" is lame in my opinion. So then it's just XP, which means you're just adventuring to learn Indomitable 1/day or Brutal Critical while casters are getting 5th level spells lol.

While I agree with your post,, (and this is not directed at anyone in particular), but it burns me when people say that money can not be used in 5e. Why not use it like Conan did?

Conan, (and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser), spent gold on Wine, and Companionship, and presumably later on, on winning a kingdom.

The group of twelve year olds I DM for can figure out how to creatively spend gold...seems like something adults can figure out as well. (Sorry Pet Peeve).

Rafaelfras

2024-07-20, 05:26 AM

Which is a key difference. The Magic-User acquiring the Wish spell also used to require the DM to open the Goodie Room, but not in 5e.
The question was if a martial could get an ability to kill something in a hit. And Vorpal sword is the answer. Your fighter can do 6 attacks in a round, 7 if you get haste, 8 to 9 attacks at 20, I think is a fair comparison with the artificer and his 2 attacks. This is a class feature. A Vorpal blade in the hands of a fighter is better because of the nature of the fighter. And we cannot ignore how items interact with classes.
I understand and agree that this is DM dependent, and agree that a caster will get wish regardless. But wish is a spell that can be used only once a day (unlike the Vorpal blade that will work in every attack forever) and essentially is a duplicate of a 8th level spell. Anything over than that is also the DM opening the goodie bag plus 33% chance of never ever being able to use it again. It is not that end all be all that people tend to attribute to it. It's not "I wish it dead"or anything like that.

You talk about this scaling phenomenon as if it's unique to martials. It's not.

Do the same process with an Evoker Wizard (lore wise the quintessential damage caster) and you get (assuming only a 40% save rate):

Level 5 Evoker (using 1 Fireball, and then firebolt spam):
28*.6 + 14*.4 = 22.4 for the fireball
11*.65 + 11*.05 = 7.7 for the firebolts
~9.13 rounds to drop

Now obviously things change at 11, but that is true for every class.

For evoker you should start using magic missile after level 10 because evokers will apply their Int bonus on it. Also cone of cold, fireball and fire bolt will get bonus on their damage as well

QuickLyRaiNbow

2024-07-20, 08:44 AM

Conan, (and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser), spent gold on Wine, and Companionship, and presumably later on, on winning a kingdom.

The group of twelve year olds I DM for can figure out how to creatively spend gold...seems like something adults can figure out as well. (Sorry Pet Peeve).

For starters, this was something that was part of an earlier conception of D&D and it's a tremendous shame that it's been lost over the years.

But second, it reflects changes in how play happens. Kingdom management by its nature requires a stable group of playing partners in a persistent world. 5E's primary design imperative was allowing standardized drop-in-drop-out play via Adventurer's League where the only constant is the PC. When I sit down at one of these ad hoc tables, the only thing I'm bringing is what's on the character sheet. Whose kingdom would we even be managing, and how would that be decided? In the older paradigm, those questions were answered both by the rules and by the process of gaining the thing to be managed.

Skrum

2024-07-20, 10:06 AM

For evoker you should start using magic missile after level 10 because evokers will apply their Int bonus on it. Also cone of cold, fireball and fire bolt will get bonus on their damage as well

More to the point, damage isn't the only thing wizards can do. In fact, it's fairly low on the list of things they can do. Barb on the other hand, yeah it's kind of the only thing they can do. That and stand there and get hit (which I'm not disparaging, it's an important thing, but not really relevant to this).

But if I were a wizard trying to do single-target damage -

5th level wizard -
summon fey + cantrip: 19.79 (4.29 rounds)

10th level wizard
polymorph, giant ape: 42.7 DPR against the CR 10 creature (3.7 rounds)
animate objects, tiny + cantrip: 72.04 DPR (2.3 rounds)
summon elemental + cantrip: 39.8 DPR (4.02 rounds)

Granted, summon spells can be fragile, especially animate objects. If the boss has a good AoE, they might be able to wipe out most or all of them in a single go. But ideal conditions or close to it, and the wizard has surpassed their 5th level self

Personally, I would not cast an AoE like fireball or cone of cold unless I was hitting at least 4. Depending on circ*mstance, I might go as long as 3 targets. I'll look at both
average saving throw of CR 10 creature: Dex 3.1 (round to 3), Con 6.6 (round to 7)
spell save DC of a level 10 wizard with no boosting focus and 20 int: 17

cone of cold hitting 3 targets: (average of 29.4 per target) = 88.35
4 targets: 117.8

fireball hitting 3 targets: (average of 33 per target) = 99
4 targets: 132

5th level wizard using fireball against CR 5 creatures
hitting 3 targets: (average of 22.4 per target): 67.2 DPR
hitting 4 targets: 89.6 DPR

Either of these figures absolutely blow the barb out of the water. Not really what we're talking about and not sustainable round over round, but interesting all the same. But notably, the 10th level wizard is significantly better at casting fireball than they were at 5th

Side note, cone of cold is terrible. Hitting Con saves is damning for it. My guess is it's a little easier to hit more creatures with it though

Psyren

2024-07-20, 10:22 AM

1) I'm purely referring to the 2024 versions as this is a 2024 thread, not "mix-and-matching." Specifically the UA text since we don't have the finals yet, but I'm not expecting PAM/GWM/Charger/Sentinel to have significant changes. (Others like Dual Wielder, Sharpshooter, and Mobile Speedster are a different matter.)

2) 2024 GWM got rid of the Power Attack feature, but even with that gone, the 2024 Berserker comes out ahead in damage. 2024 GWM includes a 1/round damage boost that Treantmonk factored into his DPR calculation, and activating it has no accuracy penalty. And again, they're all half-feats in 2024, so you're not delaying your ASI to grab them like you would have been in 2014.

3) PAM is a straight upgrade for most martials, as it retains it's primary functionality while becoming a half-feat now. The one big downside of the new version is that it doesn't work with quarterstaffs or spears anymore, but that would only affect non-martials like clerics or druids.

Same barb, but now level 10 and with 19 str. Rest the same. Creature is AC 17 with 160 hit points
DPR: 41.5. 3.8 rounds to drop. Not as bad as before! But still noticeably worse than level 5

w/ +2 weapon that add 1d6 damage per hit
DPR: 63.06. 2.5 rounds to drop

1) What's "TCL?"

2) Which versions of the above feats are you using? Are you still on 2014?

3) Does the Barbarian have a subclass?

Pex

2024-07-20, 10:37 AM

Example -
A generic level 5 barb with 18 str, a great axe, rage, and constant adv (either reckless attack or flanking) attacks an average CR 5 creature (15 AC, 85 HP)

Deals: 23.2 DPR. It would take the barb 3.66 turns to drop the creature

Same everything, but now at level 10. The barb now has 20 str. A CR 10 creature has AC 17 and 160 hit points

Deals: 26.23 DPR. It would take the barb 6.09 turns to drop the creature

Deals: 38.84 DPR. It would take the barb 4.12 rounds to drop the creature. Still worse than the 5th level barb, but certainly in the ballpark.

I really don't think the developers consider this, and honestly anyone who says martial classes don't "need" magic items, I just assume they're not playing a combat-focused game.

Fair enough. I was thinking more of the specific weapon. A warrior doesn't need Frostbrand or Sunblade. Not even a 20th level Paladin must have a Holy Avenger. The PCs don't have to go on a shopping trip either. I only advocate the magic weapon should be in the form the player likes even if the DM custom makes the item. Ideally the power level of the item is appropriate to the power level of the campaign.

Blatant Beast

2024-07-20, 10:56 AM

The question was if a martial could get an ability to kill something in a hit. And Vorpal sword is the answer.

That is incorrect framing. What I actually inquired was how do you build a weapon based feature that is comparable to Wish. Magic loot is not a class feature, unless, like Skrum suggested, some sort of class ability is included that guarantees certain classes certain items at certain times....which means Artificers should not have infusions, Rogues, Fighters, Barbarians, etc should.

More Importantly, as we can see by the Vorpal Blade, Magic Items made for Martials are often just weaker than items for Casters. A Staff of Power has no restriction on the item's use against targets.

The Hero Sigurd, in Germanic myth, acquired the magic sword Gram, because it could kill the dragon Fafnir. In 5e, that is just now how it works.

A Vorpal Blade not being able to slay a legendary creature is an arbitrary line of demarcation, because the devs were afraid, (I would even go so far as to call them cowardly), that a random attack roll might actually just kill the big bad.....which is the entire F-ing point of a VORPAL BLADE.

S-Tier Foes, Demon Lords, Gods, Elemental Princes, Lich Archmages....these foes can die bodily, and come back.

Outright dying to Massive Damage for players, largely goes away by 4th level, but it still exists....if Hit Points inflation needs to happen, in order for 5e to function, then weapon attacks become slog-fests, in which the most powerful weapons of myth, like Gram, become dull butter knives for us to wheedle away at a pool of 300+ hit points. That is not particularly exciting, nor is it 'realism'.

Sorry Raf, I find your response lacking, (no offense meant).

For starters, this was something that was part of an earlier conception of D&D and it's a tremendous shame that it's been lost over the years.

Most 5e players do not play in Adventurer's League. If Adventurer's league was 5e's Design Goal, then it failed. Drop-In games by their very nature, are more limited than the old standard of a group people sharing the creation of a shared world that they play in.

One really does not need Kingdom Management rules. Many times, those rules just abstract things to dice rolls, or setting a goal that will take time, and the dice roll influences the amount of time and the degree of success will take, (thinking of Ars Magicka, here).

Ability Checks can accomplish this in 5e. Beyond this, I think we all can imagine uses of cash here. If you kicked down the door to Tony Montana's House, survive his "little friend", defeat Tony, and find millions of dollars.....you can probably think about ways to use the loot.

D&D, ultimately, is about people listening to each other. The DM's best question sometimes is "What do you want to do?" and then make some rulings, and if the DM needs more time, they can wait to the next session.

Facetiously, Adventurer's League is basically Tinder for D&D: drop in, have a good time...and split. I am sure there is fun to be had there, but it is certainly not going to create the same level of bonds, knowledge, and commitment as playing with the same people week after week.

Is spellcasting in the new edition going to be significantly less interesting? [Archive] (2024)

References