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

[EzekielRaiden]

A big nitpick for me is, that no matter what subclass, caster usually default to the same spells.
Wizards will always have Fireball, Tiny Hut, banishment and Co.
A Warlock will always spam Eldritch Blast (Except the hexblade).
A cleric always has spiritual weapon and spiritual guardian and so on.

So no matter the subclass, all those classes play actually too similiar at the table because full casters are about 90% the spells they have and only 10% the subclass. And there are always optimal spell choices.

A warlock not taking the best invocations to i mprove Eldritch Blast will weaken the party the same as a wizard who is not taking fireball.

Turns out, when you give players the freedom to choose between 2-3 dozen options, the cream will rise to the top. When the options have little to no intersection with the unique flavor or identity of that character, the best options will tend to be quite uniform.

At any given level, there are usually anywhere between two and five excellent, stand-out, nearly-universally-good spells for any given class, which should always be top picks. Anything else is either neat but unnecessary, genuinely worthless, or a Ritual you should keep in mind but rarely prepare.

But remember, spells ensure that characters aren't samey like they were in the edition that must not be named!

 

[YouMeetInATavern]

That makes it a little better, but I still don't think the spell is very good.

Possibly not. I've only tried summon fey as a player, and it kept getting smashed very quickly. I guess it's taking some hits for the team, but it didn't feel "great". Funnily enough, I've seen the Summon X spells get criticised for being too OP (a "martial as a spell"), so they're pretty well regarded in some circles.

Either way, on the DM side I've started nixing the Conjure X spells in favour of Summon X, mostly because I can't be bothered dealing with the potential for stacks of conjured creatures slowing things down, cluttering the board, etc.

 

[Zardnaar]

Turns out, when you give players the freedom to choose between 2-3 dozen options, the cream will rise to the top. When the options have little to no intersection with the unique flavor or identity of that character, the best options will tend to be quite uniform.

At any given level, there are usually anywhere between two and five excellent, stand-out, nearly-universally-good spells for any given class, which should always be top picks. Anything else is either neat but unnecessary, genuinely worthless, or a Ritual you should keep in mind but rarely prepare.

But remember, spells ensure that characters aren't samey like they were in the edition that must not be named!

5E spells vary more in application though you're talking about power levels.

4E most just damage and some rider effect.

3.5 had more variety to pick from.

4E had even less tgan 5E iirc in the PHB and they were split 50/50 for each path.

 

[Hussar]

That's kinda the risk when you pick more exotic races imho.

It's not really a risk though, unless the DM wants to end the campaign. I mean, sure, the DM (me) could do it, but, then what? "Hey guys, you failed those saving throws, three of the five characters are now completely unrecoverable. All that time you spent in this campaign? Yeah, that's down the toilet."

Yeah, that's a fantastic end to a campaign.

 

[Hussar]

5E spells vary more in application though you're talking about power levels.

4E most just damage and some rider effect.

3.5 had more variety to pick from.

4E had even less tgan 5E iirc in the PHB and they were split 50/50 for each path.

Can you not with the edition warring? Is it actually possible? Good grief, just fighters, by the tail end of 4e, had several THOUSAND power options. Never minding the 45 other classes in the game. This idea that spells were "just damage with some rider effect" is simply not true. Let's not forget that you had the U in AEDU - as in "Utility"? That thing that actually wasn't directly combat related but rather allowed you to do stuff outside of combat? That quarter of your character sheet's powers that had pretty much nothing to do with combat? Never minding the several HUNDRED rituals for 4e that any character could use, not just the casters.

If you're going to comment on editions you obviously haven't played, at least have the common decency to bother trying to at least approximate facts, rather than just tossing out tired old, dead horse arguments.

 

[Zardnaar]

It's not really a risk though, unless the DM wants to end the campaign. I mean, sure, the DM (me) could do it, but, then what? "Hey guys, you failed those saving throws, three of the five characters are now completely unrecoverable. All that time you spent in this campaign? Yeah, that's down the toilet."

Yeah, that's a fantastic end to a campaign.

They can get hone with a 5th level spell, pay someone to cast it for them or find a portal. They've existed since 2E.

Once again if you're picking extra planar races that's on them. Just lije sone races are immune to hold person you might open yourself up to sonething else eg blight, shatter or banishment.

 

[Zardnaar]

Can you not with the edition warring? Is it actually possible? Good grief, just fighters, by the tail end of 4e, had several THOUSAND power options. Never minding the 45 other classes in the game. This idea that spells were "just damage with some rider effect" is simply not true. Let's not forget that you had the U in AEDU - as in "Utility"? That thing that actually wasn't directly combat related but rather allowed you to do stuff outside of combat? That quarter of your character sheet's powers that had pretty much nothing to do with combat? Never minding the several HUNDRED rituals for 4e that any character could use, not just the casters.

If you're going to comment on editions you obviously haven't played, at least have the common decency to bother trying to at least approximate facts, rather than just tossing out tired old, dead horse arguments.

I was comparing apples to apples phb to phb.

5E has more spells in Xanathars and 3pp for example.

3.5 also had more spells non phb. 2E probably beats all the others.

Cleric in 5E has something like 6 or 8 spells 4th level spells in phb 4E has 4 or 6 powers in the PHB?

 

[M_Natas]

This is certainly a case where I would most likely create a specialized and pre-defined Necromancer spell list for them to use, and would have no problem incorporating a few cleric or druid necromantic spells into it if they made sense.

I did the work with my wizard 2.0 and added spells to the schools that lack good spells at certain levels: https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-specialist-wizard-the-wizard-2-0.700649/#post-9173186
In order to gain access to certain spells of a school of magic proficiency or expertise in that school of magic (and you can get expertise only once). So a necromancer has a different spell list than an evoker or enchanter or diviner.
That means you can only have Fireball Or Counterspell but not both.

 

[M_Natas]

Of course then we have 8 different classes and all 8 different classes need utility spells, combat spells and enough flavorful spells that they can be played without the others. To do that properly wizards would have to completely make each school of magic a seperate and equally playeable in all kinds of games, list of spells. Then do away with the generic everyone uses this list of spells. done right it could be amazing but no one who's tried anything similar since D&D started has pulled anything like it off. Though I'd personally love to see necromancy be only in the pervue of clerics of death and life and first thing I'd do would be to remove necromancy spells from all players that didn't have a god or patron to grant them, leaving only 7 schools of magic to flesh out. The biggest problem with this over the years has been that flavorful often means a few classes get massively awesome spells like fireball, timestop, clone etc and everyone else gets stuff that doesn't compete on any level. Making 7 or 8 different spell lists that all have roughly the same generic utility is much harder than it sounds and possibly requires the death of a few sacred cows. Then to make that work you have to stop letting other classes get wizard or cleric spells and make them thier own lists, and of course then you need to make seperate but equally useful spell lists for each domain and do away with general spell lists for clerics. Which because of things like healing and ressurection become an impossible task because healing and a few other things always are always the most useful.

So basically to do it you have to completely redesign D&D magic for everyone and not destroy enough sacred cows that the masses revolt. I can't imagine wizards under hasbro being willing to attempt that.

I tried to do the redesign with my Wizard 2.0:

https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-specialist-wizard-the-wizard-2-0.700649/#post-9173186

People mostly ignored it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

5E spells vary more in application though you're talking about power levels.

4E most just damage and some rider effect.

3.5 had more variety to pick from.

4E had even less tgan 5E iirc in the PHB and they were split 50/50 for each path.

And yet the actions one type of Fighter would take would be consistently different from the type of actions another type of Fighter would take.

Being a particular type of <class> actually mattered for how you played and what you wanted to do. Being a particular type of <class> in 5e? Makes little to no difference. Pretty much all Fighters want the same kinds of feats. Pretty much all Warlocks want the same spells and invocations. Pretty much all Wizards will have the same staple spells, whether they're Diviners or War Wizards or Stupidly Overp--I mean Bladesingers. Etc., etc.

The allegedly huge variety evaporates rather quickly when you realize that (at least!) half the spells on your class's spell list aren't worth the cost of casting them.