D&D 5E Teleport /fly /misty step the bane of cool dungeon design is RAW in 5E

Saelorn said:

One of the perpetual issues with 5E is that characters have far too many resources for a typical adventuring day, such that resource expenditure is frequently not a limitation.

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So, sounds like its less of a dungeon issue and more of a class design issue then?

Ancalagon said:

Will the heroes manage to use the clues left by the long dead cultist to reconstruct the ritual allowing them to cross the mists safely?

Will they instead run through and try to survive the claws of the ghostly demons hidden within the mists?

Or will they go "lol, this , I cast fly!"

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And, once they cast fly and take off, flying creatures of the mists attack them. Both ghosts and many kinds of demons can fly, after all, so its not like its a stretch to assume they'll pick up on someone approaching with zero cover. If anything, its more dangerous, because all the demons would swarm them at once. A hint or two towards that effect, and tada. Suddenly the PCs will either not fly, or just as possibly, risk it and quite possibly lose some of their comrads, which is what a good dungeon is supposed to do to begin with.

Or, you know, a storm with violent winds that makes navigation impossible once inside it.

Honestly, this maze of yours sounds like it has a number of issues in the first place that hurts it as a good/cool dungeon. What about a group that uses hiding techniques to slip their way through? Clearly, there's already some light that can bleed through the mists - what stops the PCs from just using cantrips to light up the entire mist and see all the dangers clear as day? What about a very simple Magic Circle or Protection spell? No worries about ghostly demons then.

How many people do you have with Fly, anwyays? Sorcerers, wizards and warlocks have it on their spell list, and its Concentration. Assuming four PCs, how are you going to get the entire party across using Fly? Chances are, you are not going to have two Sorcerers in your party, both of which are Twinning the spell. Even if we assume a Sorcerer and a Lore / level 10+ Bard (who happens to have Fly), lets say, that's still only three people that can fly. We going to leave the fourth behind? And that's a rather extreme case - while its easy for a wizard to prepare the spell, its going to be a rather competative slot, leaving a lot of question if they're going to even have the spell for the dungeon.

You create a very atmospheric little scene there. But as an argument? Its so full of holes that spagetti strainers are jealous. Pretty much worthless.

Hussar said:

1. The casters simply negate the skill users.

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Sounds like a larger problem with class balance than specific spells having an effect on dungeon design.

I mean, do you really picture, in your head, when thinking about paladins, Portapaladins bouncing around the scene?

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The stereotypical paladin cavalier. Not really. But the fun thing about 5e is that Paladin, as a class, is not the same thing as a 3e or 4e paladin. Its a hybrid of paladin, avenger, warden and a few others here and there. An avenger are classically a highly agile warrior (and usually not in heavy armor), and its also the only paladin with Misty Step. I have absolutely no problem with this. Fits their theme perfectly.

On your second point about running out of resources, well, there's a couple of things there. Firstly, the casters get SO MANY resources. Sure, Teleport might be a bit of a bit resource wise, but, the lower level stuff? Not so much. And, secondly, it starts the whole 15 MAD cycle off with a bang. The party is all (or mostly all) casters. It's in all their interests to stop for long rests and get spells back. IME, it's not unusual for 3/4 of the party to be long rest based, which means that 3/4 of the party wants to stop at the same time.

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I have never had a problem with the so callled 5 minute work day. Never had a group do it, never was in a group that did it. And even if the party did? We play in a living world - the bad guys don't stop and wait for PCs to rest.




In short, my takeaway is thatthis thread is actually not about dungeon design as much as just another angle to complain about spellcasters in general.

Hussar said:

For me, the problem is twofold.

1. The casters simply negate the skill users. What's the point of having a skill monkey character when two or even three of the characters in the party can simply bypass whatever skill check through magic? The monk example is a perfect one. The monk had actually spent character resources to be able to do the wire-fu thing. Very cool. Very in character. Rule of cool and all that.

Then the paladin says, "hold my beer" and teleports to the top of the roof, no checks, no chance of failure, no drama and about as interesting as soda crackers. I mean, do you really picture, in your head, when thinking about paladins, Portapaladins bouncing around the scene? I know in our group, we had a fighter and a paladin, and the pally almost always got into a fight before the fighter. Bonus action teleport, poof, he's in the thick of things. Gee, the fighter can burn his Action Surge for extra movement, but, he's only got that once per short rest. That 8th level paladin has what, 3?, second level spells.

2. On your second point about running out of resources, well, there's a couple of things there. Firstly, the casters get SO MANY resources. Sure, Teleport might be a bit of a bit resource wise, but, the lower level stuff? Not so much. And, secondly, it starts the whole 15 MAD cycle off with a bang. The party is all (or mostly all) casters. It's in all their interests to stop for long rests and get spells back. IME, it's not unusual for 3/4 of the party to be long rest based, which means that 3/4 of the party wants to stop at the same time.

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As someone who's played several paladins I constantly find myself agonizing on whether to cast my spells or save them for smites. While full casters might not think twice about casting Misty Step (though I think if I was playing a wizard or sorcerer, I'd let the monk handle it rather than get my squishy and less-agile self get involved in a rooftop chase) half-casters don't have enough spells to just cast them willy-nilly.

[MENTION=6786252]Mephista[/MENTION] : the mist was very thick, but pooled at the bottom. On the balcony the PCs could see above the mist. My apologies for the poor description.

There was no storm as it was indoors, you only need one fly spell (surely you know about the fly taxi trick?), in my game the PCs didn't have access to those spells either (not a d&d game!) and lastly the ghostly demons were contained by the mist.

The hall was essentially an obstacle/defensive feature for the long dead cultists, a "only the initiated can pass!" kinda deal, and also a place of sacrifice (the floor was littered with the bones of hundreds of victims).

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Ancalagon said:

[MENTION=6786252]Mephista[/MENTION] : the mist was very thick, but pooled at the bottom. On the balcony the PCs could see above the mist. My apologies for the poor description.

There was no storm as it was indoors, you only need one fly spell (surely you know about the fly taxi trick?), in my game the PCs didn't have access to those spells either (not a d&d game!) and lastly the ghostly demons were contained by the mist.

The hall was essentially an obstacle/defensive feature for the long dead cultists, a "only the initiated can pass!" kinda deal, and also a place of sacrifice (the floor was littered with the bones of hundreds of victims).

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That's assuming that the GM allows such a trick that does not exist in the rules. I don't see any reason to. And doesn't deal with giant mutant bats sleeping in the ceiling. Does not touch on the BBEG casting dispell that I mentioned before. Or the other spells and techniques to bypass the dangers I mentioned. Or just include a simple no-magic zone.

Whenever you translate something, its going to require a bit of work to translate things over for different game assumptions. There's a number of very easy tweaks you can do to make the transition fairly easily.

Ancalagon said:

To give credit where it's due, that scene is from one of the adventures that came with the Dragon Warriors gaming system, published in the 1980s. I ran a long warhammer 2nd campaign on a pseudo earth setting, and this was the final showdown as the heroes confronted Baylor, the Lord of Death (the campaign was original, but with borrowed bits here and there. At once point I used a real-world tourist guide to Aleppo to run a dungeon under the citadel).

It was a very cool dungeon. And it would have been *ruined* by mobility spells.

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This seems an odd complaint. It's like saying that this dungeon would also have been ruined if you played it with superheroes in FATE. Dungeons (and adventures in general) need to match the assumptions of the system and setting you're using -- you can't just drop something that's cool over here in somewhere else with entirely different assumptions and then complain. Well, you can, but it's a bit nonsensical.

Do mobility effects and spells require additional effort? Sure thing, but if you're looking for wire-fu as the best awesome in game, you should either limit access in your game to those abilities (and deal with those consequences) or play a game that does wire-fu really well. D&D isn't, and has never been, that game.

To beat this horse one more time, not being able to run that cool dungeon in D&D in now way actually limits the cool dungeons you can run in D&D, even ones that would be impossible to run in Dragon Warriors (or whatever).

Mephista said:

So, sounds like its less of a dungeon issue and more of a class design issue then?

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The problem is how certain class features interact with certain dungeon features. You could solve the problem by addressing either side.

Hussar said:

Well, really there are two separate but related issues here.

1. the large number of caster classes in 5e with easy access to pretty much any spell they want. You didn't run into the fly/teleport issues in 1e as much simply because there was only one character in the group (most likely anyway) who could do it and there were often better things to memorize than fly. In 5e, it's not unusual for most of the PC's to have some casting abilities and many, many classes get mobility spells. Good grief, even Paladins get Misty Step.



2. The sheer amount of spells that each caster gets. Even the half casters are getting six, seven spells per day by fairly low levels. 5th or thereabouts with a half caster gets you that many spells per day and the full casters have even more. There's very, very little actual cost of having these spells available.

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The larger number of mobility spells does make things different than previous editions. But at least it's not just the mages and clerics having all the fun this time. I will also agree with a prior poster - 1/2 casters have some serious decisions when they cast mobility spells (the paladin in my group's "*@*# I can't smite!" made him think a bit more tactically in the future.)

Hussar said:

It's all part of 5e being largely Harry Potterverse. Extremely high magic where, unlike earlier editions, you will see the party casting multiple spells per round, every round, of every encounter. Back in the day, you might see one or two spells per combat. Now it's one or two spells per round.

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You'd have to go pretty far back in the day! I remember my 2e group: Paladin, Cleric, Mage, basically everyone other than the one straight fighter could cast - lots of spells being thrown about all the time. And 3e? sure it was less people casting, but the sheer number of spells flying by mid level was staggering! Granted much of the spells were "pre-combat" to the point where you literally needed a spreadsheet to keep track of all the buffs. Between that and the fact that after mid level pretty much every combat started with dispel magic... I don't think 5e is worse in the spells per combat regard.

Yeah, when players can start teleporting around the world, and i guess the Druid can do it even sooner with tree stride or whatever it is called, that's about when I start wanting -as DM - to run lower level adventures again. Its fun for a LITTLE BIT when they can magically appear and disappear from anywhere, but it soon it breaks the verisimilitude in the types of games I like to run.

Saelorn said:

The problem is how certain class features interact with certain dungeon features. You could solve the problem by addressing either side.

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And yet, people were saying it is specificall casters making skill checks of more mundane characters irrelevant. It keeps coming back to caster-and-caddy complaints.

I play in multiple systems, and honestly, this kind of argument comes up in every game. "My murder mystery was ruined because postcognition magical power exists!" "My plot was ruined because someone used magical paintbrushes to avoid the major fight!" A lot of times, it comes down to just not taking into account anything but mundane ability. That's what its increasingly sounding like here again.

Honestly, if the problem is magic at high levels, then the answer is to keep to low levels.

Mephista said:

My plot was ruined because someone used magical paintbrushes to avoid the major fight!"

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Magic paintbrushes....they ruin everything.