D&D 5E Low Level Wizards Really Do Suck in 5E

[KarinsDad]

I do think the presumption that once an enemy has cast a spell it is unlikely to be able to cast it again to be a LITTLE faulty

I didn't think anything of the sort. But, I also did not assume that it would cast another one right away either. One of my allies could have cast a spell on it (5 of the 6 PCs have spells) or criticaled it, it could have focused attention elsewhere to a greater threat. Combat is fluid. Lots of things can happen.

The first casualty of any battle is the plan (or assumptions).

As for a better tactic, it depends on the circumstances and needs of the group. Placing another enemy between yourself and the caster is worthwhile, but possibly subjects yourself to this other enemy's attacks. If there were other PCs similarly near death then drawing the caster's fire would possibly have been a decent tactic.

Yup, it can. It was unlikely in this case (foes would have had to provoke), but that's often possible.

I think from the standpoint of your survival the Fog Cloud might have been better...as I expect you may have concluded. Though it would have cost you the web spell.

It actually would have cost me the Scorching Ray (order of combat: I cast web, it saved, moved and cast lightning bolt, I cast scorching ray and moved behind a different undead, it moved and cast lightning bolt). And as I pointed out earlier, not damaging the naga with scorching ray might have been more detrimental to the party.

Depending upon the GM, the minor illusion cantrip may be used to block vision in at least one direction without the necessity of concentration.

If one is in a 5 foot wide corridor, sure. But, not in a room fighting. No matter the direction, worse case, a foe would only have to move 5 feet to spot someone behind a 5x5x5 minor illusion cube. And of course, this does not stop lightning bolt, so I'm not sure why you are suggesting it. It takes an action and does practically nothing. Fog Cloud is much better.

Course, the rules on knowing where a PC is located if he casts Fog Cloud and then moves within it are basically non-existent in 5E. Each DM will run it differently (correct me if I am wrong on this).

Dropping prone could have helped protect you from ranged spell attacks.

Yup. Course, it limits movement. I was fairly well protected via potential cover bonus plus the Shield spell. Prone tends to be more anti-ranged weapons since a spell caster can cast a save spell.

It's not really possible to posit anything beyond that without knowing what resources you had available. There ARE a variety of spells that DO shut down spellcasting.

That's the point. What could a 4th level wizard possibly have to shut down spell casting of a bone naga? Some spells might give it a penalty of some sort, but I cannot think of one that would prevent it from casting. And even if it is possible, what are the odds that the wizard has prepped (or even knows) the spell required? If the web would have worked, the Bard could have cast Silence in the area, but that too wasn't an option.

Would Blindness/Deafness work? Who knows? It sounds DM dependent on whether a bone naga could figure out where to throw a lightning bolt while blind or what penalties it might have trying to do so. My wizard didn't know the spell in any case.

For example - a suggestion to do something time consuming.

Suggestion does not always work against powerful undead since many are immune to charm. A bone naga is immune.

The sleep spell if the caster has been sufficiently wounded. They each have their downsides of course.

Sleep does not work against undead.

 

[chriton227]

Legendary Creature ACs are not that high. Bless is often in effect against such creatures. Your average chance to hit is +4 or 5 stat +4 proficiency at level 10 and +2 on average bless. If you have a magic item that boosts hit bonus, and I do, that also.

My hit roll is +4 proficiency +4 intel +2 staff =+10 with bless +12.

Generally against AC 18 to 19 for Legendary Creatures my level or slightly above.

That means I hit 70 to 75% of the time. So yes, it is unreasonable to assume 50% to hit chance.

It would be unreasonable to assume that the average 10th level character is carrying around a very rare magical item, that level of rarity usually isn't found by characters until they are L11 or higher. I also wasn't assuming you would be benefiting from a concentration based buff given how you have been talking about the difficulty you have been having maintaining concentration in the face of DC 30 concentration checks. Without those two, you would have had the +8 I assumed. With a 75% chance to hit, Fire Bolt will do an average of 8.8 damage at L10 and 13.2 damage at L11, resulting in Fireball still higher average damage by 60% or 6% respectively. So at L11 with a 75% chance to hit and the assumption that the save for Fireball will succeed 100% of the time, the cantrip finally does almost as much average damage as Fireball used suboptimally against a single target. For the general case situation where it isn't a L10 character with a Staff of Power and the assumption of a perpetual Bless, Fireball outdamages cantrips by the larger margin.

Cover does not work against a breath weapon or AoE attack requiring a Con Save. All cold and poison attacks are Con saves. That's why Rogue evasion is kind of dumb in this edition. Somehow you can evade fire and acid breath weapons, but cold and poison gas are too special to evade for reasons only the game designers can fathom.

If you take cover away from the party against a creature with 80 feet of movement, it moves to you, full attacks, and moves past you disallowing your martials from attacking it or allowing them to be sealed off by Legendary Actions that can do stuff like erect walls or create difficult terrain. As a caster you are almost forced to remain in relatively close proximity to the martials, so highly mobile creatures do not utilize their mobility to kill you off pieacemeal. Cover does not help against highly mobile creatures because they circumvent with their mobility, hit you, and move away all very quickly. Your AoO from reaction is meaningless to them unless they are very low on hit points.

Why is rogue evasion dumb because it doesn't work against two particular breath weapons, one of which makes perfect sense (why would you make a Dex save to hold your breath in the middle of a cloud of poison)? Is it dumb that it works against fire, lightning, and acid breath, as well as fireballs, lightning bolts, thunderwave, flame strike, and a whole host of other spells and attacks?

You went after a dragon in it's lair without making sure your party had the capabilities needed fight it effectively, and then you complain that as a result it ripped your party a new one. Unless you were teleported into the dragon's lair against your will, you chose to have the fight. The abilities needed to deal with those effects are available, although the members of your party may not have chosen to select them at character creation or during advancement. I'll also reiterate, a CR13 dragon by itself is pushing a deadly encounter for a L10 party. The situational advantage it gets from being in it's lair pushes it up a category to beyond deadly. Looking at that encounter in RoT (I hadn't gotten there yet, the group I'm running is still early in HotDQ), in my opinion the characteristics of the lair itself would warrant another category bump, which would go from beyond deadly to the dragon deciding whether BBQ sauce or honey mustard goes better on adventurers.

He is not using me as a crutch. He wanted to play a strength-based sword wielder. He's supposed to be punished for that because of concentration, no ability to purchase magic items, and mobility playing an increased roll with every creature able to move their full speed and do a full attack at any point during the movement? Like I said, it's my fun or his fun and both of our deaths if I don't get him into action.

This topic alone could easily be a thread in itself. I feel that players should be allowed to build the character they want, but they should not expect other members of the party to pick up their slack without asking them first, and definitely not at the expense of the fun of other players. The entire purpose of playing a RPG is to have fun, so if a player's choice prevents other players from having fun, then yes they are doing it wrong and should not make that choice out of respect for the other players. If the player is so focused that the only thing they are willing to play is a single specific character build, that is also a sign of issues because the implication there is that they expect everyone else will have to adjust to accommodate them, but they aren't willing to adjust to accommodate anyone else.

Not every character is a good fit for every party or every adventure, some characters are just flat out less effective than others, and some character concepts that were effective in older editions of the game are less so in the new edition. There are differing schools of though about whether the DM should adjust the adventure to fit the players, or whether the adventures should adapt their characters to fit the adventure, but if neither side of the screen adjust then things are going to go poorly for the party unless they luck into a good fit.

Did your group make characters knowing you would be playing in the HotDQ/RoT modules? Did you make characters together after talking about party composition and what capabilities you wanted to make sure were covered, or did everyone just make a character on their own? The strength-based sword wielder should have at least given a passing thought to "I'm playing a game called Dungeons & Dragons, that means I'll probably end up fighting dragons at some point, what will I be able to do to be useful when that time comes?" And if you knew what modules you would be in, maybe they should have thought to themselves "the first module is called Horde of the Dragon Queen, the second module is called Rise of Tiamat (the goddess of evil dragons), and the campaign is called Tyranny of Dragons, maybe this is a subtle hint that fighting dragons will be a significant element of the campaign that I should be prepared for." Sort of like when someone was creating a ranger for the old Against the Giants campaign, they might have gotten the hint that "giant" would be a good choice as a favored enemy. If they still decide to be focused entirely on melee, they might at least consider investing in the Sentinel feat to help keep the enemies in melee with them so they can take advantage of their own strengths.

The player isn't being "punished" because of concentration, they are trying to ignore the fact that there are trade-offs in their decisions and they apparently only want the positive consequences of their choices without having to figure out how to work with the negative consequences. If you chose to play a low Dex and low Con mage with no armor, Mage Armor, or Shield to maximize you Int, Cha, and focus on all evocation spells, would you say you are being punished because fighters are no longer as good at preventing enemies from getting past, or would you accept that being fragile and vulnerable in combat is a consequence of your own decisions and the price you pay for the strengths you chose? The situation appears to me that the other player made poor choices relative to the new version of the rules and the campaign, and the only way they are mitigating those poor choices is by having someone else to fix the problem for them, hence my view that they are using you as a crutch to compensate for the repercussions of their own decisions. This also appears to bother you to some extent, otherwise you wouldn't be saying things like "it's my fun or his fun and both of our deaths if I don't get him into action" emphasizing that if you don't choose to give up your fun, both characters will die as a result of the other player having his fun.

If you don't want to look at it from an OOC/metagame viewpoint, why hasn't the party done something in character before now to address the fact that they appear to be melee heavy and ranged combat deficient? More than likely they encountered their first dragon at L1, and ranged combat ability would have been a huge asset in that fight. They could have sought out hireling archers, or even gone so far as to say "sorry Sir Smashalot, we have too many members in this band that focus on close combat and you are the weakest/most unlikable/most annoying/least versatile, so we're going to need to let you go so that we can bring in someone to complement the rest of the party better. No hard feelings, and we hope you have a long and happy life while we struggle to not become a dragon's lunch."

Read Hoard of the Dragon Queen module series. See how the set up is. Imagine an intelligent DM taking full advantage of terrain and lair actions.

I've looked at that fight. I agree it is brutal, and unless your party is both well prepared and well suited for the encounter it will go very badly. I question whether an intelligent DM should be maximizing the tactical capabilities of a creature with an 8 Intelligence of a type that is expressly described as "lack[ing] the cunning and tactics of most other dragons." Once again I think it is up to either the DM to adjust the adventure to the party or the party to adjust to the adventure depending on your groups feelings on the matter. But I don't know what an adventure throwing a deadly or worse encounter has to do with the topic of whether wizards are fun or whether concentration is overly limiting, unless your view is that the presence of a wizard in the party in such an encounter should let the party defeat what the system establishes as a deadly or worse encounter and that by single-handedly altering the difficulty scale by their presence the wizard's player will have fun. Legendary Resistance was added to prevent what is intended to be set-piece encounters against legendary creatures from becoming nothing but a speedbump due to a single failed save like would happen in earlier editions. Someone at WotC decided (rightly or wrongly) that the wizard pressing an "I win" button in what should be the most dramatic combat encounters didn't make for a very fun experience for everyone else.

The adventure does make some allowances to try to help though, and I don't know if your group was able to take advantage of them.
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For example, did you interact with the NPC that was the main reason why you were there in the first place? Did they give you the items that the adventure says they offer? Did your party use them? One of the items would have gone a long way towards helping you keep concentration, the others in competent hands would have let the party do a decent chunk of damage to the dragon very quickly and maybe even gotten the dragon to burn through some of it's legendary resistance. Did you find the large cache of scrolls that include both some potentially high damage spells and some defensive spells, including one that doesn't require concentration?
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[chriton227]

Monsters eat small creatures. A loan rat wandering in a dungeon is no longer safe. Intelligent enemies accustomed to fighting wizards and the like, kill small creatures wandering in areas. That is how our DM plays it. Sure, scouting is still useful when the familiar can fit into areas where he won't be noticed amongst similar creatures. It happens less often at higher levels. The enemies we're fighting kill little spying familiars in one hit and notice them very easily. They aren't dumb enough to go, "Look, it's just an owl sitting in tree outside my window. I'll let it watch me while I do evil things." Wish it were that easy. Our DM plays enemies as ruthlessly protecting their stronghold and not taking chances with little wandering creatures.

A large predator like a dragon isn't going to waste its time eating a spider or bat, it would burn more energy in the effort than it would get from the snack. Sure some monsters may, but far from all.

If intelligent enemies decided to kill all small creatures in the area, they would be spending all of their time being an exterminator instead of furthering whatever evil plot they are working on. This might actually be a good plan, get the enemy so paranoid about potential familiars that they no longer have time to be evil. Go outside on a nice day and count how many birds and spiders you see. Figure out how long it would take you to kill them all. Then think about how many more there are you didn't see, and how many more will enter the area over time. Medieval or Renaissance level architecture isn't some hermetically sealed space station that can keep out all pests, having insects and mice and such around is just part of life in that era, along with open windows and doors for ventilation and openings to allow the smoke from torches, fireplaces, and lamps to escape. There will be far more mundane wildlife than we see in our modern urban and suburban environments, and things are far less clean (instead of car exhaust you get horse poop, markets with live and livestock instead of grocery stores, and indoor plumbing is a rarity if it exists at all). The familiar doesn't even need to be in sight to overhear conversations, and at night would be able to see into an illuminated area without needing to enter the illumination. And say somehow the enemy did manage to perpetually eradicate all familiar capable creatures in their vicinity, what would the ramifications be? Far fewer predators keeping the mosquitoes, flies, mice, and other nuisance pests in check resulting in more distraction and annoyance to the enemies, plus a conspicuous absence of that wildlife and a very noticeable level of activity for the continuous eradication effort, which could draw a lot of unwanted attention to the enemy trying to keep their efforts a secret.

Plus many enemies really aren't going to be either that intelligent, that dedicated, or that capable. Sure the evil mage masterminding a scheme to dominate the world will be hyper aware of their surroundings (when not sleeping, eating, engaged in research, perceiving through their own familiar, etc.), but their mercenary guards resting between shifts are probably much less diligent, the orc tribe a few miles up the trail would probably be taking no notice at all of any surrounding wildlife that didn't present a physical threat or a good hunting opportunity, and the owlbear across the river couldn't do anything about the hawk flying overhead if it wanted to. Even if you can only use the familiar to scout out the lackeys and lesser threats, that will still help you to surprise or avoid those threats using less resources, saving more for when you really need it against the major threats.

How often does your party kill every hawk and raven flying overhead as they travel, every bat and owl flying overhead at night, every spider in the wilderness surrounding their campsite and trails, and every stray cat and rat they see around a city? Does your DM let you know every time a mundane creature of the sort is around? If the party stopped to kill every cat, bat, snake, raven, owl, hawk, spider, frog, lizard, and fish, do you think they would even be able to travel between two cities before dying of old age? It sounds like there may be some metagaming happening on the DM's side of the screen in your game, with some rationalizations going on to justify how enemies can somehow spot, identify, and eliminate familiars that are normally indistinguishable from mundane creatures of the same type.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

If one is in a 5 foot wide corridor, sure. But, not in a room fighting. No matter the direction, worse case, a foe would only have to move 5 feet to spot someone behind a 5x5x5 minor illusion cube. And of course, this does not stop lightning bolt, so I'm not sure why you are suggesting it. It takes an action and does practically nothing. Fog Cloud is much better.

I had somehow been under the impression that the naga had been caught in the web from your initial description. Regardless, the purpose of minor illusion would have been that it presumably blocks an arc of vision in which it would be difficult to target your character. Yes, it is very much inferior to Fog Cloud for this purposes but again has the advantage of not requiring concentration. The illusion does not NEED to be adjacent to the enemy (if the enemy is mobile)...although that would realistically cause the arc of obscured vision to shrink. An illusion of something like a wall might not be immediately recognizable as insubstantial enough to fire a lightning bolt through, depending on the DM's tendency to handwave circumstances in favor of the monsters. I find that it is frequently possible to at least TEST how a DM will handle the ability to target unseen enemies by using spells such as Fog Cloud in easier, less vicious combats. Many DMs will...TEND...to keep things more or less consistent.

Would Blindness/Deafness work? Who knows? It sounds DM dependent on whether a bone naga could figure out where to throw a lightning bolt while blind or what penalties it might have trying to do so. My wizard didn't know the spell in any case.

Different DMs will, of course, rule differently on the matter. If monsters are able to unerringly able to target specific PCs, however, while blind and not possessing some sort of extra sense...that probably deserves an out-of-character discussion with said DM.

Suggestion does not always work against powerful undead since many are immune to charm. A bone naga is immune.
...
Sleep does not work against undead.

Nagas, incidentally, are altogether immune to charm effects. And so would have been unaffected by either spell even if the individual specimen was not undead. I suppose I was thinking of generic anti-caster possibilities. Tasha's Hideous laughter might have worked, however (with the significant caveats of the spell), most effectively with a readied action. As might have a well thought-out Phantasmal Force. Yes, these latter two would both have been less reliable than scorching ray.

 

[Celtavian]

It would be unreasonable to assume that the average 10th level character is carrying around a very rare magical item, that level of rarity usually isn't found by characters until they are L11 or higher. I also wasn't assuming you would be benefiting from a concentration based buff given how you have been talking about the difficulty you have been having maintaining concentration in the face of DC 30 concentration checks. Without those two, you would have had the +8 I assumed. With a 75% chance to hit, Fire Bolt will do an average of 8.8 damage at L10 and 13.2 damage at L11, resulting in Fireball still higher average damage by 60% or 6% respectively. So at L11 with a 75% chance to hit and the assumption that the save for Fireball will succeed 100% of the time, the cantrip finally does almost as much average damage as Fireball used suboptimally against a single target. For the general case situation where it isn't a L10 character with a Staff of Power and the assumption of a perpetual Bless, Fireball outdamages cantrips by the larger margin.

Wand of the War Mage would be more common. It also provides a bonus to hit. What part of casting buffs again did you miss when concentration is broken?

Your math analysis is dumb. It's a 3rd level spell lot which you don't seem to be taking into account versus an at will attack. Would you spend a 3rd level spell slot to do 6% more average damage? If you roll high and it happens to miss its save, it's using his Legendary Resistance. So don't even pretend the 60% is happening. It has an automatic trump card for the off chance you roll high damage and it misses its save. Take it in. You roll maximum damage, 48 points...all 6s, you have Yahtzee on the roll. Your ecstatic. It rolls it save. It rolls a 1 or 3 and misses. You're thinking....this is awesome. I got lucky and nailed the dragon for a huge hit. DMs says it uses one of its three Legendary Resistances. You do 24 points. It's definitely higher than the cantrip. But about the same for a level 10 Great Weapon Fighter or Archer that hits twice.

It takes all of that to do 24 points of damage. If you were equally lucky with your cantrip. You roll a 20 and you get Yahtzee on your double dice. You do 40 points of damage at level 10.

Like I said, there is no mathematical analysis you can do to prove that a 3rd level slot fireball with a save is a better expenditure of resources against a Legendary Creature that will take guaranteed damage from an unlimited resource fire bolt. It's a losing argument on your part for many, many reasons.

Why is rogue evasion dumb because it doesn't work against two particular breath weapons, one of which makes perfect sense (why would you make a Dex save to hold your breath in the middle of a cloud of poison)? Is it dumb that it works against fire, lightning, and acid breath, as well as fireballs, lightning bolts, thunderwave, flame strike, and a whole host of other spells and attacks?

Because the principle is the same. Why would dodging a cone of fire out of a dragon's mouth be any different than dodging a cone of cold or poison? The sources of delivery is the same. The rogue isn't holding his breath. He is getting out of the way.

The rules are basically saying that for some reason the poison and cold from a dragon's breath are not something you can dodge, but their' saying the acid and fire can be dodge? It makes no sense and is dumb. Doubt we'll ever agree otherwise.

A generic cloud of poison that floats into the area, I can understand. Green dragon 90 foot cone of poison gas. Red dragon 100 foot cone of fire. White dragon cone of cold. Fire is dex save, cold and poison con. Why? Because that's what the devs decided. And it makes evasion useless against the Con save breath weapons even though there is no reason to believe dodging the cones would be any different.

You went after a dragon in it's lair without making sure your party had the capabilities needed fight it effectively, and then you complain that as a result it ripped your party a new one. Unless you were teleported into the dragon's lair against your will, you chose to have the fight. The abilities needed to deal with those effects are available, although the members of your party may not have chosen to select them at character creation or during advancement. I'll also reiterate, a CR13 dragon by itself is pushing a deadly encounter for a L10 party. The situational advantage it gets from being in it's lair pushes it up a category to beyond deadly. Looking at that encounter in RoT (I hadn't gotten there yet, the group I'm running is still early in HotDQ), in my opinion the characteristics of the lair itself would warrant another category bump, which would go from beyond deadly to the dragon deciding whether BBQ sauce or honey mustard goes better on adventurers.

Like what? What was available? You can't buy magic items in this game. So don't pretend that was available.

We used Fire Shield for one person or you forget the low number of spell slots and inability to make scrolls to boost spell slots. We also had Protection from Energy up on the cleric. And fly. The two spells I'm complaining about. Because once we had those two spells up, we were done casting concentration spells. Both are concentration.

Protection from Energy protects once person. Fly cast at level 4 spell works on two people.

So what other spells should we have had? Let's hear it.

This topic alone could easily be a thread in itself. I feel that players should be allowed to build the character they want, but they should not expect other members of the party to pick up their slack without asking them first, and definitely not at the expense of the fun of other players. The entire purpose of playing a RPG is to have fun, so if a player's choice prevents other players from having fun, then yes they are doing it wrong and should not make that choice out of respect for the other players. If the player is so focused that the only thing they are willing to play is a single specific character build, that is also a sign of issues because the implication there is that they expect everyone else will have to adjust to accommodate them, but they aren't willing to adjust to accommodate anyone else.

Parties that don't work together against powerful creatures die. The wizard cannot stand up to a round of dragon attacks along with a breath weapon. He cannot do enough damage to take it down alone (which I agree he shouldn't). You can't buy magic items in this game like fly potions or scrolls. So you have to cast on the fighter or martials or they sit on the ground. Javelins past 30 feet have disadvantage. Dragons move 80 feet and full attack.

Stop pretending like we're somehow making mistakes. The only thing you can say is we didn't bring enough archers. Sorry, the martial players in my group didn't make an archer thinking the game would be set up like this. In previous editions of D&D you could have fun making whatever type of martial you wanted because you didn't have to have to ranged attacks. The casters could get the martials into action with fly without gimping themselves defensively and offensively.

Not every character is a good fit for every party or every adventure, some characters are just flat out less effective than others, and some character concepts that were effective in older editions of the game are less so in the new edition. There are differing schools of though about whether the DM should adjust the adventure to fit the players, or whether the adventures should adapt their characters to fit the adventure, but if neither side of the screen adjust then things are going to go poorly for the party unless they luck into a good fit.

I feel that players should be allowed to build the character they want

Did you contradict yourself?

I'm advising never make anything without a ranged weapon that is good over 60 feet. So pretty much a crossbow or bow user. Don't even bother making strength-based characters any longer using swords and axes. Only Dex-based characters or you'll be screwing your casters as they have to figure out how to get you into battle. If you're an archer or crossbowman, you'll never have that problem. That's my advice to you if you never want to be an inconvenience to your casters due to concentration.

Did your group make characters knowing you would be playing in the HotDQ/RoT modules? Did you make characters together after talking about party composition and what capabilities you wanted to make sure were covered, or did everyone just make a character on their own? The strength-based sword wielder should have at least given a passing thought to "I'm playing a game called Dungeons & Dragons, that means I'll probably end up fighting dragons at some point, what will I be able to do to be useful when that time comes?" And if you knew what modules you would be in, maybe they should have thought to themselves "the first module is called Horde of the Dragon Queen, the second module is called Rise of Tiamat (the goddess of evil dragons), and the campaign is called Tyranny of Dragons, maybe this is a subtle hint that fighting dragons will be a significant element of the campaign that I should be prepared for." Sort of like when someone was creating a ranger for the old Against the Giants campaign, they might have gotten the hint that "giant" would be a good choice as a favored enemy. If they still decide to be focused entirely on melee, they might at least consider investing in the Sentinel feat to help keep the enemies in melee with them so they can take advantage of their own strengths.

Favored enemy doesn't do much any longer. We don't metagame. We make characters to have fun. Not with a foreknowledge of the module our DM is running. We shouldn't have to create characters with foreknowledge of the module.

The player isn't being "punished" because of concentration, they are trying to ignore the fact that there are trade-offs in their decisions and they apparently only want the positive consequences of their choices without having to figure out how to work with the negative consequences. If you chose to play a low Dex and low Con mage with no armor, Mage Armor, or Shield to maximize you Int, Cha, and focus on all evocation spells, would you say you are being punished because fighters are no longer as good at preventing enemies from getting past, or would you accept that being fragile and vulnerable in combat is a consequence of your own decisions and the price you pay for the strengths you chose? The situation appears to me that the other player made poor choices relative to the new version of the rules and the campaign, and the only way they are mitigating those poor choices is by having someone else to fix the problem for them, hence my view that they are using you as a crutch to compensate for the repercussions of their own decisions. This also appears to bother you to some extent, otherwise you wouldn't be saying things like "it's my fun or his fun and both of our deaths if I don't get him into action" emphasizing that if you don't choose to give up your fun, both characters will die as a result of the other player having his fun.

Parties that don't work together, die in our campaigns.

If you don't want to look at it from an OOC/metagame viewpoint, why hasn't the party done something in character before now to address the fact that they appear to be melee heavy and ranged combat deficient? More than likely they encountered their first dragon at L1, and ranged combat ability would have been a huge asset in that fight. They could have sought out hireling archers, or even gone so far as to say "sorry Sir Smashalot, we have too many members in this band that focus on close combat and you are the weakest/most unlikable/most annoying/least versatile, so we're going to need to let you go so that we can bring in someone to complement the rest of the party better. No hard feelings, and we hope you have a long and happy life while we struggle to not become a dragon's lunch."

No. We couldn't have. It is not easy at all to find level 10 archers. You think finding level 8 or 10 characters is easy? One breath weapon for low level archers, they're dead. Do you think the dragon is going to dumbly sit there and allow itself to be peppered with archery or fly up an destroy it with breath weapon and then fly on. I don't know if you have a fought a dragon yet, but being able to move 80 feet a round and full attack or breath weapon along any point does not make them easy to control. They have superior mobility to any character in the party.

I've looked at that fight. I agree it is brutal, and unless your party is both well prepared and well suited for the encounter it will go very badly. I question whether an intelligent DM should be maximizing the tactical capabilities of a creature with an 8 Intelligence of a type that is expressly described as "lack[ing] the cunning and tactics of most other dragons." Once again I think it is up to either the DM to adjust the adventure to the party or the party to adjust to the adventure depending on your groups feelings on the matter. But I don't know what an adventure throwing a deadly or worse encounter has to do with the topic of whether wizards are fun or whether concentration is overly limiting, unless your view is that the presence of a wizard in the party in such an encounter should let the party defeat what the system establishes as a deadly or worse encounter and that by single-handedly altering the difficulty scale by their presence the wizard's player will have fun. Legendary Resistance was added to prevent what is intended to be set-piece encounters against legendary creatures from becoming nothing but a speedbump due to a single failed save like would happen in earlier editions. Someone at WotC decided (rightly or wrongly) that the wizard pressing an "I win" button in what should be the most dramatic combat encounters didn't make for a very fun experience for everyone else.

The adventure does make some allowances to try to help though, and I don't know if your group was able to take advantage of them.
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For example, did you interact with the NPC that was the main reason why you were there in the first place? Did they give you the items that the adventure says they offer? Did your party use them? One of the items would have gone a long way towards helping you keep concentration, the others in competent hands would have let the party do a decent chunk of damage to the dragon very quickly and maybe even gotten the dragon to burn through some of it's legendary resistance. Did you find the large cache of scrolls that include both some potentially high damage spells and some defensive spells, including one that doesn't require concentration?
[/sblock]

Yes. We interacted with her. She gave us some nice scrolls. I added quite a few nice spells to my spellbook.

To our knowledge use of a scroll does not obviate concentration. So even if you cast a spell off a scroll, you're still stuck concentrating. All it does is save a spell slot. Unless of course you know differently. If you do, let me know.

 

[Celtavian]

A large predator like a dragon isn't going to waste its time eating a spider or bat, it would burn more energy in the effort than it would get from the snack. Sure some monsters may, but far from all.

If intelligent enemies decided to kill all small creatures in the area, they would be spending all of their time being an exterminator instead of furthering whatever evil plot they are working on. This might actually be a good plan, get the enemy so paranoid about potential familiars that they no longer have time to be evil. Go outside on a nice day and count how many birds and spiders you see. Figure out how long it would take you to kill them all. Then think about how many more there are you didn't see, and how many more will enter the area over time. Medieval or Renaissance level architecture isn't some hermetically sealed space station that can keep out all pests, having insects and mice and such around is just part of life in that era, along with open windows and doors for ventilation and openings to allow the smoke from torches, fireplaces, and lamps to escape. There will be far more mundane wildlife than we see in our modern urban and suburban environments, and things are far less clean (instead of car exhaust you get horse poop, markets with live and livestock instead of grocery stores, and indoor plumbing is a rarity if it exists at all). The familiar doesn't even need to be in sight to overhear conversations, and at night would be able to see into an illuminated area without needing to enter the illumination. And say somehow the enemy did manage to perpetually eradicate all familiar capable creatures in their vicinity, what would the ramifications be? Far fewer predators keeping the mosquitoes, flies, mice, and other nuisance pests in check resulting in more distraction and annoyance to the enemies, plus a conspicuous absence of that wildlife and a very noticeable level of activity for the continuous eradication effort, which could draw a lot of unwanted attention to the enemy trying to keep their efforts a secret.

Plus many enemies really aren't going to be either that intelligent, that dedicated, or that capable. Sure the evil mage masterminding a scheme to dominate the world will be hyper aware of their surroundings (when not sleeping, eating, engaged in research, perceiving through their own familiar, etc.), but their mercenary guards resting between shifts are probably much less diligent, the orc tribe a few miles up the trail would probably be taking no notice at all of any surrounding wildlife that didn't present a physical threat or a good hunting opportunity, and the owlbear across the river couldn't do anything about the hawk flying overhead if it wanted to. Even if you can only use the familiar to scout out the lackeys and lesser threats, that will still help you to surprise or avoid those threats using less resources, saving more for when you really need it against the major threats.

How often does your party kill every hawk and raven flying overhead as they travel, every bat and owl flying overhead at night, every spider in the wilderness surrounding their campsite and trails, and every stray cat and rat they see around a city? Does your DM let you know every time a mundane creature of the sort is around? If the party stopped to kill every cat, bat, snake, raven, owl, hawk, spider, frog, lizard, and fish, do you think they would even be able to travel between two cities before dying of old age? It sounds like there may be some metagaming happening on the DM's side of the screen in your game, with some rationalizations going on to justify how enemies can somehow spot, identify, and eliminate familiars that are normally indistinguishable from mundane creatures of the same type.

In a world where the dragon is the top of the food chain and can replace the lost energy easily, smashing an intruding creature spying on him is quite easy.

How often do we kill birds or things we see? Nearly every time we are able if we're moving in a stealthy fashion because we're intelligent also and don't feel like being spied on. It's not always easy outside. Spying outside is not a problem.

Sending a familiar ahead in a dungeon or a house often leads to its death. Those are the areas where you want information the most. Sending a bird flying around outside on the trail I still do. Sending my familiar ahead in the dungeon not so much. If it isn't a hungry troll or annoying kobold killing it, it's a frost giant guard or barbed devil killing it. It's not anywhere near as useful now due to the danger of the enemies.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Wand of the War Mage would be more common. It also provides a bonus to hit. What part of casting buffs again did you miss when concentration is broken?... Like what? What was available? You can't buy magic items in this game. So don't pretend that was available.

One of these statements is not like the other...

I'm advising never make anything without a ranged weapon that is good over 60 feet. So pretty much a crossbow or bow user. Don't even bother making strength-based characters any longer using swords and axes. Only Dex-based characters or you'll be screwing your casters as they have to figure out how to get you into battle. If you're an archer or crossbowman, you'll never have that problem. That's my advice to you if you never want to be an inconvenience to your casters due to concentration.

You're trying to be sarcastic here, but this is actually good advice in 5E, and it's something that we've been trying to tell you throughout this whole thread. Even if you're a melee specialist, why would you not at least pick up a longbow? It's better than being totally helpless against flying threats.

Did you contradict yourself?

You might want to go back and reread Chriton227's full sentence, because the second half of it resolves the "contradiction" you think you see. "I feel that players should be allowed to build the character they want, but they should not expect other members of the party to pick up their slack without asking them first, and definitely not at the expense of the fun of other players."

 

[Celtavian]

If this discussion does get back to WotC, the easiest solution to fix this is provide more spells without concentration that provide good offensive options. Spiritual Weapon works like Bigby's Hand and Flaming Sphere, but doesn't use concentration. Provide the wizard more spell options like Spiritual Weapon, so they don't suddenly become limited by concentration when casting fly. I understand limiting buffs and defensive spells used in conjunction like fly and invisibility being used together as that was practically an "I win" button in past editions. But for spells like Bigby's Hand and Flaming Sphere, you have built in limiters with the Bonus Action to attack requirement. That limits their use because players only have one bonus action, thus they can only use one spell requiring a bonus action attack at a time.

If you're building your spell design matrix, maybe use a design rule like the following:

Utility/Defense: Bottlneck is concentration allowing one spell to be in effect at a time.

Offense: Bottleneck bonus actions. Only one bonus action attack spell active at a time.

This provides a limiter on active spells, while at the same time allowing arcane casters a little leeway on offense rather than concentration limiting offense, utility, and defense. That is how I would do the work around from a spell design standpoint.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

If this discussion does get back to WotC, the easiest solution to fix this is provide more spells without concentration that provide good offensive options. Spiritual Weapon works like Bigby's Hand and Flaming Sphere, but doesn't use concentration. Provide the wizard more spell options like Spiritual Weapon, so they don't suddenly become limited by concentration when casting fly. I understand limiting buffs and defensive spells used in conjunction like fly and invisibility being used together as that was practically an "I win" button in past editions. But for spells like Bigby's Hand and Flaming Sphere, you have built in limiters with the Bonus Action to attack requirement. That limits their use because players only have one bonus action, thus they can only use one spell requiring a bonus action attack at a time.

If you're building your spell design matrix, maybe use a design rule like the following:

Utility/Defense: Bottlneck is concentration allowing one spell to be in effect at a time.

Offense: Bottleneck bonus actions. Only one bonus action attack spell active at a time.

This provides a limiter on active spells, while at the same time allowing arcane casters a little leeway on offense rather than concentration limiting offense, utility, and defense. That is how I would do the work around from a spell design standpoint.

I concur that Bigby's Hand and Mordenkainen's Sword are not worth memorizing in their current form, and that if your proposal were implemented in the 5E spellbook, offensive wizard options would become attractive instead of pointless traps. (It would also differentiate Bigby's Hand/Mordy's Sword from Conjure Elemental/Animate Object.) This is a good rule proposal/house rule.

 

[Celtavian]

One of these statements is not like the other...

I substituted a more common magic item for a rare one.

You're trying to be sarcastic here, but this is actually good advice in 5E, and it's something that we've been trying to tell you throughout this whole thread. Even if you're a melee specialist, why would you not at least pick up a longbow? It's better than being totally helpless against flying threats.

Your effectively going to die if you don't make an archer specialist against flying creatures that are powerful. What I'm saying is that a player should not be limited to making a dex-based character because it is the far, far superior option due to other limitations in the game. Right now having run with both melee martials and ranged archer martials, the ranged archer martials are vastly superior even if they have to take an occasional AoO to move out of melee range to not have disadvantage.

You might want to go back and reread Chriton227's full sentence, because the second half of it resolves the "contradiction" you think you see. "[/FONT][/COLOR]I feel that players should be allowed to build the character they want, but they should not expect other members of the party to pick up their slack without asking them first, and definitely not at the expense of the fun of other players."

I read that part. What I'm saying is that don't even bother playing a melee martial if that is how you're going to think about character creation. If you make a strength-based melee martial, you will always be inferior to dex-based martial archer against dragons and other powerful flying creatures like Balors or Pit Fiends. That means you will always be needing someone to pick up the slack.

What chriton is saying that no one should ever make anything other than a ranged archer. They will always need a fly spell. Not even a fly potion helps because a fly potion (we have one now) only allows flight at the users ground movement rate. So move at 60 feet or 30 feet against a creature moving at 80 feet plus. You pretty much have to have the fly spell.

If you're making characters and the other players like "You ok casting a fly spell on me because I feel like making an axe wielding barbarian. I want to try something different from a crossbow or bow guy. I'm getting tired of playing them."

What if the other goes, "No. Make an archer or crossbow guy for the tenth time in a row. I want to be able to cast Sunbeam or Bigby's Hand in battle, so I can do decent damage. I don't want to cast fly on you so you can hit things with an axe while I use inferior attack spells because I'm concentrating.[/I]."

Response, "Ok. I guess I'll try a barbarian crossbowman now with dex. It's not the greatest class synergy. But I don't want you to have to cast a fly spell on me. I sure wish fly potions were better. Damn"

Maybe if the martials find a magic item that lets them fly at full speed, things will change.