The opposite of what? balanced? You seem to be saying that the only options are: have the spell not be to particularly useful for its level, or instantly pawn almost any foe. There are other ways. Perhaps it could have a lesser effect (stun, slow, etc.) on foes with greater than 100 hp. IIRC 3e had something like this over several categories of HP ranges. Or the spell could just do a boatload of damage to those who's HP total exceeded the limit, as I proposed above. Or even a casting time of a bonus action or reaction.
The opposite of what others seem to want, which is a more powerful spell. I'm fine with it as is, and like it better than the AD&D version which was stronger in comparison because of the lower hit points of monsters.
I have suggested a modification to force a system shock check when used against creatures that have more than 100 hp. At a minimum the creature can't take reactions until the end of their next turn, it has a 20% chance of imposing disadvantage on their attack rolls, a 20% chance of stunning them, and a 30% chance of dropping them to 0 hp (which in many cases would be the instant kill that others seem to want against more powerful creatures). I also like the variability of this approach, rather than a fixed effect.
The game has traditionally been balanced via hit points, and starting with 2e they started inflating the hp of more powerful monsters so they'd last longer against a group of PCs. When PC abilities and damage output started increasing, the hp inflated more. Part of the reasoning behind this approach that has been stated by designers is that "it's not fun to miss." But there are other ways to balance besides inflating hit points. Resistance effectively increases hp (but adds math, simple as it is), but much of the alternatives would revolve around misses and reducing damage.
They did more than bounded accuracy, but you are referring to the action economy, which is what Legendary Creatures with Legendary Resistances, Legendary actions, Lair Actions and such were designed to mitigate, with varying degrees of success. Or you could just have more foes; numbers count more in this edition, and 'taking out' (not that the spell has to do such) one out of four or so tough opponents is less of an "I win button."
No, I'm referring to bounded accuracy. The idea that hit points and other abilities are spread over a smaller range so that low level creatures still have a chance against higher level creatures. This is a direct reversal of the 4e approach where each level represented an increase in damage output and hit points, to the degree that low level creatures had to have their stats inflated to keep pace. The town guard you met at 1st level had no chance of defending the town against 10th or 15th level threats. I agree that it was too easy to slay the "toughest" challenges like dragons, etc. so I wouldn't go back that far, but 5e is still a bit inflated for my tastes.
I just did a quick perusal of OGL Monsters for 5e (a pitiful small sample of the whole, non-OGL field, mind you) and it seems that by CR7 or 8 most monsters are not outright 'taken out' by this spell, with a few exceptions like Arch Mage and such. A fair bit of CR 6 and a few CR 5 are not affected either. I'm not saying that is a good or bad thing per se, just presenting a data point.
That's what I was wondering. First, what it would impact, and now what others think about that result. I, personally, am fine with the idea that it kills a CR5ish creature outright, but you need to do some damage first to more powerful creatures. It seems like others here expect it to take out higher level creatures, but I don't think I've seen any sort of threshold mentioned as acceptable to them. Is CR10 enough? CR 12?
From a design standpoint, I would say it depends on cost to benefit. If it costs enough, it could merit the benefit. A fireball could be instant and unavoidable death for a lot of creatures, particularly upcast (or pick other heavy damage spell).
Yes, and the 5th level jump in damage output is significant because of things like fireball (although fireball is also an outlier since it does more than other 3rd level spells for some reason). There uses to be more risks to using things like fireball, not just killing others, but destroying treasure, and the mechanics behind the original made it harder to hit exactly what you wanted. Again, I don't particularly have any issue, other than as the range of hp went up between 1st and 15th level characters, the impact of such spells varies more depending on the CR.
Of course it is a group effort! Very few of us (I would imagine) do player vs player. It is a matter of contributing effectively to the success of the team/party that many of us are concerned with. I realize some are more number crunchy or 'gamiest' than others. Some more story oriented etc., but the above seems to translate into "I don't care a wit about balance, you might as well not even have spell levels and such, as long as we can just play along." That's a great attitude and fun play style, but it makes it hard to have a meaningful conversation about balance and design, though it is a play style to keep in mind when designing the game to avoid over-complicating things.
There has been a trend for some time for (some) folks to focus on things like party roles, spotlighting (intentionally, rather than it just being part of the game), which has moved into the character build concepts. There are lots of threads here and elsewhere where people will complain that a given rule (or house rule, proposed change, etc.) steps on their character's toes. Often to the degree that people will declare that it either ruins a class, makes it useless, or they wouldn't play in a game with that rule. For example, I've seen a great many threads where people complain that one of the other players decided to make a character of the same class, and that has ruined the game for them, with lots of others in agreement that it's "not cool" to do that.
For us, it has more to do with the character contributing "as a person" rather than specific abilities. That within the context of the setting and story, this character provides whatever it is they do, and it's almost never about combat-related things. For us, it's more a big picture thing than specific moments in specific combats (unless it's a certain circumstance, like a
Princess Bride or
Pirates of the Carribean style duel). So there are several more combat-oriented characters (the fighters, rangers and paladin being obvious ones), and in many combats it's a question of who is left, who they can't take care of, since they're the muscle. Sorcerers and wizards tend to prefer utility spells, and things that function outside of combat, except for aoe spells to address larger groups of enemies. They feel that it's much more beneficial than helping take out an enemy one or two rounds faster.
D&D also has a strong strategic and (perhaps less so in this edition) tactical element. Resource management and expenditure is a thing, and though I think it wise to avoid playing in such a way that things are 'balanced' to within a hair on a spreadsheet like stock analysts at the stock exchange, some consideration should be given here.
Oh, those are huge things in our campaign. Our combat rules are redesigned in a way to allow more strategic and tactical options, to work in the context of a one-on-one duel and a regular battle between 4-8 PCs, potentially some allies, and a couple of dozen orcs, all the way up to slaying a dragon. Resource management extends to things like fatigue, including within the course of a battle and being able to wear down your opponent, etc.
Sounds fun. I would think in such a campaign, 'knocking off' a BBEG would be less of an issue than others. But I'm not advocating instant death for everyone though.
In general, it is. I don't have a problem with the BBEG dying (or being defeated) quickly. My issue is knowing that a certain percentage of people in the world can instant kill daily. I have the same issue with the idea that a certain percentage of the population can raise creatures from the dead daily. And since there are a number of spells at several levels that do this, they could raise several people each day. The 5e approach to limiting this was to limit the spell slots. I'm OK with that, but it still doesn't explain why, in a world where there are at least thousands of people that can cure disease, neutralize poison, and raise dead, that these abilities wouldn't be used more frequently, that they wouldn't be well organized, and that folks would be anything other than a cleric, for example. We've taken a number of different approaches, such as raising the level of magic needed to cure disease, or modifying how resurrection magic works, and that there are risks involved. In other words, we tend to approach it from an in-world perspective. That is, "if I were an evil wizard and once per day I could use
power word kill to take out a hated rival or enemy, why wouldn't I? What would stop me from doing that?
Interesting, perhaps making the spell a bonus action to cast in your type of campaign would give the spell (otherwise unchanged) a nice and useful niche by making it harder to disrupt. Or not, I guess it would need to be play tested.
Yes, as others have pointed out, that was one of the big advantages of the spell in AD&D, that it was much more difficult to disrupt. It also allowed you to instantly kill multiple lower level creatures (one creature with 60 hp, or multiple creatures of less than 10 hp, to a max of 120 hp). I think it was used more to instantly kill a dozen minions than the BBEG. Another thing to remember, though, which I haven't seen mentioned here, is that some creatures in AD&D had magic resistance. This gave you a flat percentage of failure before any saving throw came into play. So a spell with no saving throw was more powerful, but not to the level it is in 5e where resistance gives you advantage on your saving throw. It definitely would take out many powerful creatures, though, liches and dragons didn't have magic resistance, and a lich could be in the 60-point range from the start (and dragons pretty close), Again, from that standpoint, I think the spell was too powerful even then.
We don't actually have bonus actions (or reaction), but shortening the casting time to that of a 1st level spell has the same effect. As in AD&D, you have probably one character that has a chance to disrupt it, instead of several.
