D&D 5E What, if anything, bothers you about certain casters/spells at your table?

[Micah Sweet]

Given players vastly outnumber DMs, how did the current situation ever arise?

Players complained about the ritual thing, WotC designed by committee and "fixed" it. Badly.

 

[Distracted DM]

I despise Suggestion. It's effects are completely up to interpretation, and my experience has been that if a player wants to use it, the DM will attempt to loophole it into obsolescence, but if the DM uses it, any attempt to do the same is called out as "metagaming", lol.

That sounds like a conversation to have with your DM.

My experience with Suggestion is:

• players casting it will usually try to make the most of it
• Players subjected to it will try to satisfy the Suggestion as quickly as possible
• As DM I'm usually way too occupied running to think of player-level suggestions to make the most of it.. and when I can, I don't LIKE doing it cuz that means they won't be playing for a while.

 

[Hussar]

That sounds like a conversation to have with your DM.

My experience with Suggestion is:

• players casting it will usually try to make the most of it
• Players subjected to it will try to satisfy the Suggestion as quickly as possible
• As DM I'm usually way too occupied running to think of player-level suggestions to make the most of it.. and when I can, I don't LIKE doing it cuz that means they won't be playing for a while.

This is so true.

I’ve had “that” conversation with my players- well, if we do it, the baddies can do it too. But no they realistically can’t. Because if I drop Banishment on your party, two of you being from the Faewild, means you are effectively dead, the other one is an aberration from the far Realms, so he’s dead too and now I’ve just wiped the party because the baddies cast two Banishment spells.

Yeah, no thanks.

I’m very tired of having to deal with this.

 

[Tonguez]

My biggest issue is spells that replicate skills but get auto success.

Alarm and Snare are stupid since they are just use of rope (tool)
Locate and find the path are just an survival/investigate roll

I actually don't mind Guidance since they're heroes and a roll is still needed

Pass without trace needs to be nerfed to maybe a +1d4 bonus

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is so true.

I’ve had “that” conversation with my players- well, if we do it, the baddies can do it too. But no they realistically can’t. Because if I drop Banishment on your party, two of you being from the Faewild, means you are effectively dead, the other one is an aberration from the far Realms, so he’s dead too and now I’ve just wiped the party because the baddies cast two Banishment spells.

Yeah, no thanks.

I’m very tired of having to deal with this.

Then take Banishment out of the equation for the players too, if you're unwilling to let its effects apply to them fairly.

 

[Hussar]

Then take Banishment out of the equation for the players too, if you're unwilling to let its effects apply to them fairly.

But, then the players scream bloody murder because you're being unfair.

It's not that I'm unwilling to apply it's effects fairly, it's that using those effects basically ends the campaign. I'd much rather not have effects in the game that can end the entire campaign based on a single saving throw. And, given that the revised Banishment allows saving throws per round, now it's fair.

See, it's not that I'm against magic per se, but, after ten years of play, the warts in the magic system have become rather obvious. This is why they revised the summonings in Tasha's to get rid of the 8 wolves thing which just grinds the game to a screeching halt. This is why you get summoning templates, rather than summoning actual monsters, because a single spell summoning does not need to fulfill the same role in the game as a monster does.

Same as how Spiritual Weapon is now getting a revise as well. It's not that it's necessarily overpowered, but, it's just so good at what it does that it becomes the default choice. Why would you not take this spell? Grant me a second attack for an entire combat that does about as much damage as my regular attack, and at range? Ok, yes.

I am rather looking forward to 2024e for the fact that they seem to have grasped this fact and have gone some distance toward revising a number of the spells. One would hope that they go a bit further and more of the more egregious spells get revised.

And, just to more directly reply to the suggestion of taking the spell out, that's also my entire problem. That solution DOESN'T WORK. Because I have zero interest in policing the game and going through spell after spell after spell. Your response, @Micah Sweet is the standard response every single time. "Oh, just take out that spell. Just change that other spell. Just do this. Just do that." No thanks. I have zero interest in that. I don't want to go through spell lists and deal with that. That's what WotC is for.

Suggesting that you just "change the game" is never helpful because you are treating the symptom and not the disease. Any single spell is not the problem. The problem is that there are multiple spells, for multiple classes, at multiple levels, compounded with race abilities and feats and multi-classing. It's a systemic problem. And, frankly, one I dealt with by simply banning all full casters from my game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But, then the players scream bloody murder because you're being unfair.

It's not that I'm unwilling to apply it's effects fairly, it's that using those effects basically ends the campaign. I'd much rather not have effects in the game that can end the entire campaign based on a single saving throw. And, given that the revised Banishment allows saving throws per round, now it's fair.

See, it's not that I'm against magic per se, but, after ten years of play, the warts in the magic system have become rather obvious. This is why they revised the summonings in Tasha's to get rid of the 8 wolves thing which just grinds the game to a screeching halt. This is why you get summoning templates, rather than summoning actual monsters, because a single spell summoning does not need to fulfill the same role in the game as a monster does.

Same as how Spiritual Weapon is now getting a revise as well. It's not that it's necessarily overpowered, but, it's just so good at what it does that it becomes the default choice. Why would you not take this spell? Grant me a second attack for an entire combat that does about as much damage as my regular attack, and at range? Ok, yes.

I am rather looking forward to 2024e for the fact that they seem to have grasped this fact and have gone some distance toward revising a number of the spells. One would hope that they go a bit further and more of the more egregious spells get revised.

And, just to more directly reply to the suggestion of taking the spell out, that's also my entire problem. That solution DOESN'T WORK. Because I have zero interest in policing the game and going through spell after spell after spell. Your response, @Micah Sweet is the standard response every single time. "Oh, just take out that spell. Just change that other spell. Just do this. Just do that." No thanks. I have zero interest in that. I don't want to go through spell lists and deal with that. That's what WotC is for.

Suggesting that you just "change the game" is never helpful because you are treating the symptom and not the disease. Any single spell is not the problem. The problem is that there are multiple spells, for multiple classes, at multiple levels, compounded with race abilities and feats and multi-classing. It's a systemic problem. And, frankly, one I dealt with by simply banning all full casters from my game.

Banning works too. All I can say is, if a fiddly bit was causing problems in my game, I'd change the fiddly bit. If it was part of a bigger problem, I'd address that. If you don't want to do that, fair enough I guess. But I don't trust WotC to address issues in my game the way I'd want, assuming I was going to buy their recycled not-edition anyway.

 

[Hussar]

Banning works too. All I can say is, if a fiddly bit was causing problems in my game, I'd change the fiddly bit. If it was part of a bigger problem, I'd address that. If you don't want to do that, fair enough I guess. But I don't trust WotC to address issues in my game the way I'd want, assuming I was going to buy their recycled not-edition anyway.

See, there's the difference. I actually took the time to read the playtests, at least some of them, and saw that they had made many of the changes that will make my game more fun. Plus I had seen the changes that they had done in both Tasha's and the later books, with their newer monster design, and realize that yuppers, I'm happy with that.

I'm not thrilled with the lack of changes to the classes. But, outside of that? Yeah, sign me up.

 

[leozg]

The problem is that there are multiple spells, for multiple classes, at multiple levels, compounded with race abilities and feats and multi-classing. It's a systemic problem.

I made my own version of the PHB with all the changes needed to fix this systemic problem, but its a neverending work. After reading the answers here I made a lot of changes into it.
After literally years working on it, the changes I made were directed toward:
1-removing auto-success or auto-failure (adding tests)
2-removing cantrip damage scaling
3-adding more uncertainty in spells that guide the players
4-adjusting level of spells that should not make a fantastic thing so common (like resurrection)
5-making spellcasting more dificult (adding counter effects, adding chance to fail...).
6-decreasing spell slots.

My main issue is not with powerful spells, but with spells that completely remove aspects that I think a fantasy adventure should have, like trying to avoid any harm while camping (Leonund's tiny hut), trying not to starve while traveling (goodberry), traveling (teleport), trying to solve a murder (speak with the dead, resurrection)...

Can't say I'm not having fun fixing it, but I would like to focus on playing. WotC have people being paid to do it, have a great community telling them what to do, have experience, knows what went wrong and what worked out. They should do it and stop saying it's not broken because the DM can houserule (fix) it.

 

[YouMeetInATavern]

I actually don't mind Guidance since they're heroes and a roll is still needed

Having played with a "guidance spammer" once, the bonus to rolls wasn't the issue at all for me, rather the constant interruptions of someone shouting "guidance!" no matter where they are or what they're doing.

Summon Undead that costs 300 gp a shot

The material component isn't consumed. You only need to buy it once.