D&D (2024) Abilities as Spells: splitting your abilities between class section and spell section

[Horwath]

Except, nowhere in the entry for Verbal spell components (PHB, page 203) does it mention how loud the verbal component must be. You said, "most DMs I played with say that the voice must be loud enough to be heard in battle" but that's not an official rule. That's just an arbitrary parameter your DMs have created.

Also, I never said that the Ranger could ignore verbal components. I said they could mutter a simple line like, "You are mine" or "Now I have you" as the verbal component.

that is true,

however, I believe that this is reason most DMs think that Verbal components are very loud:

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Or just make spellcasting harder - by getting rid of the Spell Casting Focus and Component Pouch, and forcing spellcasters to keep track of all material components.

I suspect that would be equally poorly received by the community.

Well, I have a feeling that most of my suggestions would be met with various eye rolls, none of them well-disguised.

 

[Horwath]

It depends on how you look at it.

From my POV, instead of making martials much more powerful, I prefer to make magic more rare- I think that making spellcasting much less common makes both spellcasting and regular ol' abilities better. But I also know that my preferences on that are the distinct minority.

we played one campaign where you could only have levels in full caster class equal to half your character level/round up.
Essentially, all casters were forced to multiclass on 1by1 basis, at least. You could always have less caster levels then half if you wanted to.
multiclassing between 2 full casters was allowed, point was to limit access to high level spells, not spell slots.

it worked very nice.

 

[Incenjucar]

Verbal components are obviously anime move name shouting.

 

[Dausuul]

Or just make spellcasting harder - by getting rid of the Spell Casting Focus and Component Pouch, and forcing spellcasters to keep track of all material components.

That doesn't make it significantly harder. It just makes it tedious. I've put in my time filling sheets of notepaper with inventories of fluff, string, and tiny stale tarts, thanks.

As for 40% of the book being devoted to spells, much of that could be solved by consolidating and deleting redundant spells. Why isn't hold monster just the upcast of hold person? Why do we have both ice storm and cone of cold -- are the minor differences really worth two separate spells? Or consider friends, command, charm person/monster, dominate person/monster, suggestion, mass suggestion, compulsion, geas... how many variations on "spell that makes bad guys do what I say" does one game need in the core book?

 

[Incenjucar]

Consolidating spells has the side effect of giving limited-known-spell spellcasters more options for fewer class resources.

 

[DEFCON 1]

My question about "consolidating spells" is what exactly do you think WotC would be using its word count to be putting in it place? I mean I'm pretty sure it wouldn't "more martial stuff", because if they wanted more martial stuff in the game they could rejigger their word count right now to put "more martial stuff" in it. Or another class or more species? Again, not likely, because they could put a new class or several new species into the PHB right now if they really wanted to. Heck, they could just increase the size of the book if they thought it necessary to put more stuff in it.

Basically, all these spells in the game are not holding back other meaningful stuff. Rather... they are including these spells because they have history in the game and many players aren't so hung up on "too much magic"... so why remove them? Just because some other players think there's too many? Well, those people can just ignore them if they don't want to use them. Heck... almost none of my campaigns have ever gotten past like level 13, which means all those 8th and 9th-level spells in the game are "wasting space" for me, but you don't see me saying they all should be cut out. I accept that there is stuff in the book I will never use. And that's fine. Not everything in every book is written for me.

 

[Gammadoodler]

My question about "consolidating spells" is what exactly do you think WotC would be using its word count to be putting in it place? I mean I'm pretty sure it wouldn't "more martial stuff", because if they wanted more martial stuff in the game they could rejigger their word count right now to put "more martial stuff" in it. Or another class or more species? Again, not likely, because they could put a new class or several new species into the PHB right now if they really wanted to. Heck, they could just increase the size of the book if they thought it necessary to put more stuff in it.

Basically, all these spells in the game are not holding back other meaningful stuff. Rather... they are including these spells because they have history in the game and many players aren't so hung up on "too much magic"... so why remove them? Just because some other players think there's too many? Well, those people can just ignore them if they don't want to use them. Heck... almost none of my campaigns have ever gotten past like level 13, which means all those 8th and 9th-level spells in the game are "wasting space" for me, but you don't see me saying they all should be cut out. I accept that there is stuff in the book I will never use. And that's fine. Not everything in every book is written for me.

It may not be more martial stuff, but it could be. It could also be skill stuff. We even have precedent for this in XGtE.

Ultimately it's a question of mechanical design budgeting. Every spell represents time, ink, and page space spent on spellcasting that could have been spent elsewhere.

People in favor of the spell list consolidation are, I would suggest, generally in favor of that change in resource allocation.

Yes, to your point, there is no guarantee that the resources would be reallocated to things we care about, but all things being equal, at least there would be a chance.

It's like if your significant other wishes you'd spend less money on video games. There's no guarantee that you'd put that money toward stuff they care about..but at least there'd be a chance.

 

[Gorck]

As for 40% of the book being devoted to spells, much of that could be solved by consolidating and deleting redundant spells. Why isn't hold monster just the upcast of hold person? Why do we have both ice storm and cone of cold -- are the minor differences really worth two separate spells? Or consider friends, command, charm person/monster, dominate person/monster, suggestion, mass suggestion, compulsion, geas... how many variations on "spell that makes bad guys do what I say" does one game need in the core book?

Were you around for 3e? That was some serious spell bloat! In 5e there is Cure Wounds and you can restore more HP by up-casting using a higher slot. In 3e, there was Cure Minor Wounds, Cure Light Wounds, Cure Moderate Wounds, Cure Serious Wounds, and Cure Critical Wounds all as separate spells. Likewise, the Inflict Wounds spells had their same counterparts. And even Mass Cure Wounds had Light, Moderate, Serious, and Critical versions. In 5e, Bigby's Hand is 1 spell with multiple effects, while in 3e it was 5 different spells (Crushing Hand was incorporated into the Grasping Hand effect in 5e). Similarly, Enhance Ability in 5e allows you to choose which Ability Score is affected, but in 3e it was 6 separate spells. I'm sure there's more, but these are the ones that immediately come to mind.

 

[tetrasodium]

Were you around for 3e? That was some serious spell bloat! In 5e there is Cure Wounds and you can restore more HP by up-casting using a higher slot. In 3e, there was Cure Minor Wounds, Cure Light Wounds, Cure Moderate Wounds, Cure Serious Wounds, and Cure Critical Wounds all as separate spells. Likewise, the Inflict Wounds spells had their same counterparts. And even Mass Cure Wounds had Light, Moderate, Serious, and Critical versions. In 5e, Bigby's Hand is 1 spell with multiple effects, while in 3e it was 5 different spells (Crushing Hand was incorporated into the Grasping Hand effect in 5e). Similarly, Enhance Ability in 5e allows you to choose which Ability Score is affected, but in 3e it was 6 separate spells. I'm sure there's more, but these are the ones that immediately come to mind.

5e overly combined that line of spells. It became too easy for a PC to have a full optimal suite of healing and any other spells. Heck get cure wounds on a wizard or multiclass out of a fractional caster with it to a full caster without it and you're able to use it for any spell slot.tge prevalence and mechanical superiority of wackamole healing is the only reason you don't see more about it. Further condensing the spells would be a disaster eating to happen