My Experiment with 5e - No Classes with Cantrips

[Hussar]

This surprises me. In my experience, the spellcasters speed up the combat. We, perhaps, have less time lost to indecision than at your table, but when a fireball deals a total of 200 damage as opposed to the 45 a fighter is dealing in one round, it tends to push the combats closer to the end faster.

Sure, but, the time lost as the wizard places that fireball in juuuust the right square and then making sure that the spell template is the right size and orientation eats up so much time. IOW, sure, you might end the combat a round earlier, but, the casters' individual turns are so much longer that it winds up being much longer at the table.

Again, the last statement, about how much damage they deal per round, seems to contradict the 'speeding up combat' element. Do you also avoid using monsters with spells or things that simulate spells like breath weapons?

Again, because the combat is fairly predictable (within a certain level of predictable), I can simply design encounters with an eye towards difficulty by keeping an eye on the HP totals of opponents. Also, even monsters with area of effect effects, you're only talking about a few critters with one or two effect choices, all being run by a single brain - the DM - who is (hopefully) paying attention to the game and not dithering.

As I started to read this thread I wondered if adding the Warlock would help. It has so few spells that there is little paralysis there... They have less spell options than the ranger. However, it sounds like that did not work for you.

It's not so much about the options than the opportunities. Warlocks cast spells every single round. This isn't what I want in a low magic game. It's too Harry Potter for what I want.

[quote
Can you give some examples where this was better without magic and worse with magic? I'm curious what you're seeing as problems with magical solutions.[/QUOTE]

When the characters lack magic, they are forced to rely on skills, proficiencies and actually trying to use the elements in the game in order to overcome obstacles. There's a number of areas. In exploration, it's far easier to just send your bat familiar, or use Arcane Eye, to scout out than to send the rogue in. You can't simply ignore climbing or swimming with a fly spell or whatever. You actually have to use things like Insight when talking to an NPC rather than Zone of Truth or Charm spells. Virtually every single element outside of combat has a spell fix for it. When you don't have any core casters, it forces the players to interact in ways that aren't instant wins and adds a greater level of tension. Additionally, simple challenges like climbing a wall become real challenges when you don't have the cleric spamming Guidance spells.

 

[jgsugden]

...
It's not so much about the options than the opportunities. Warlocks cast spells every single round. This isn't what I want in a low magic game. It's too Harry Potter for what I want...

They generally have 2 or 3 slots per SR, plus cantrips that are effectively archery. With the right invocations, they might spam illusions or something, but I have always felt like warlocks, like 4E monks, were more like Rangers and Paladins - they spam attacks and augment them with a few spells.

Regardless, I've never been too worried about heroes overcoming challenges using magic. They rarely have enough magic to overcome all challenges (either due to spell selection, slots, or design), and I like it when they use magic to overcome challenges - it makes them feel like heroes that can do the impossible. It makes for a good story.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

5e works pretty well as a low magic game, IMO.

Adventures in Middle Earth congratulates you on figuring that out.

and they STILL fail pedestrian tasks 5% of the time.

Where are you getting this from? There is no auto-fail for skill checks. A natural 1 only matters on attack rolls and death saves.

 

[Hussar]

They generally have 2 or 3 slots per SR, plus cantrips that are effectively archery. With the right invocations, they might spam illusions or something, but I have always felt like warlocks, like 4E monks, were more like Rangers and Paladins - they spam attacks and augment them with a few spells.

Regardless, I've never been too worried about heroes overcoming challenges using magic. They rarely have enough magic to overcome all challenges (either due to spell selection, slots, or design), and I like it when they use magic to overcome challenges - it makes them feel like heroes that can do the impossible. It makes for a good story.

And that's fair enough. Totally get that. I wanted a much stronger sword and sorcery feel, which means that having two, three, or four spells being cast every single round and every single challenge being met with a shopping list of spells really doesn't get achieve that feel. It's great D&D, sure, but, it's not terribly great S&S.

 

[Ancalagon]

And that's fair enough. Totally get that. I wanted a much stronger sword and sorcery feel, which means that having two, three, or four spells being cast every single round and every single challenge being met with a shopping list of spells really doesn't get achieve that feel. It's great D&D, sure, but, it's not terribly great S&S.

That being said though - of all the "full" casters, the warlock is *by far* the most S&S.

Another thing you could do is restrict a party to one caster only (the warlock).

 

[Hussar]

That being said though - of all the "full" casters, the warlock is *by far* the most S&S.

Another thing you could do is restrict a party to one caster only (the warlock).

Oh sure. And this was certainly discussed. I frankly got kinda tired of what turned out to be a string of "well, what about ..." pitches and just shut it all down. Frankly, one thing that I realized when doing this is as soon as the DM says you can't do something, pretty much everyone wants to do that.

Next time I want to do something like this, I'm going to pitch the exact opposite of what I want and laugh all the way to the bank.

 

[CapnZapp]

What was the logic behind banning 1/3 casters and not 1/2 casters? What about monks of the 4 elements?

They don't need banning...

 

[CapnZapp]

This surprises me. In my experience, the spellcasters speed up the combat. We, perhaps, have less time lost to indecision than at your table, but when a fireball deals a total of 200 damage as opposed to the 45 a fighter is dealing in one round, it tends to push the combats closer to the end faster.

At our table, the fighters can usually roll their few dice during the previous character's turn, which makes their turn go lightning fast.

A spellcaster can never decide on what action to take ahead of time, and so have to resolve his action in "real time". This is much, much slower.

Sure, it happens that one Fireball both starts and ends the fight, but that's uncommon. It is much more common that the combat speed increased by a spell is significantly offset by the slower *player* speed.

There's exceptions of course. One of my players is severely affected by analysis paralysis, and playing a Monk is not fast for him: which opponent(s) to attack, which attack(s) to use, how many Ki points to spend, focus on movement or DPR, etc...

 

[Ancalagon]

There's exceptions of course. One of my players is severely affected by analysis paralysis, and playing a Monk is not fast for him: which opponent(s) to attack, which attack(s) to use, how many Ki points to spend, focus on movement or DPR, etc...

One of my players had *huge* problems with the monks - very fiddly - and really should have played another class (champion? barbarian?). But she was in love with the martial artist imagery and wanted to stick with it. My solution was to create a chart to help her understand the "flow" of the class. Having it laid out visually helped.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Where are you getting this from? There is no auto-fail for skill checks. A natural 1 only matters on attack rolls and death saves.

Level 1 character with specialization and 18 in a stat only has +8 to a check. If you're using the standard array, they only have +7, so it's actually a 10% chance to fail, I misspoke.

I mean sure, by the time you've reached level 9, characters typically can automatically succeed on an easy task in a skill they know with a stat that they're great at... but by that point, the full caster has a pile of spell slots and is heartily mocking tasks that might come up as 'impossible' were you to attempt them by skill.