Tony Vargas
Legend
While I wasn't impressed with HotDQ, this report is the only thing I've heard of ToD's capstone scenario, and it doesn't sound that bad. Maybe some aspects were (or were perceived as) heavy-handed, like the dragon-slaying sword and spell immunities. But, they seemed to do the job.I see a lot of criticism for WotC here for poor adventure design, but let's not forget that this was Kobold Press that designed the adventure.
Of course. It's all relative. Relative to 3.5, when casters were at their most profoundly, game-breakingly overpowered, 5e is a major come down. Compared to the other extreme, when casters were at their most nearly balanced, it's quite a leap forward. Glass half full kinda thing.Also re: magic, the free form creativity of prior edition spells does make its return here, so I'm not sure why I'm seeing a lot of of criticism of that in this thread. Everyone is entitled to their opinions though.
The comment about 4e was only for emphasis, but, yes, even taking into account moving the goalposts from "casters just had blasting and buffing" to "wizards just had blasting and battlefield control," your concern would have been unfounded, even in 4e. I'll accept that you didn't 'see' it - such blindness was a common edition-war injury, I just hope you've recovered enough of your vision to see 5e for what it is, and potentially could be in your hands were you to DM it.And if 4E allowed wizards to do much outside of blasting or controlling the play field, I certainly didn't see it. Granted, I dumped my books early on and it may have been patched in
Any concern for casters in general or wizards in particular lacking for options, flexibility, versatility and/or power in 5e is unfounded. Neo-Vanican casting combines the flexibility of 3.5 spontaneous & prepped casting in one package that the familiar-from-3e core Tier 1 full casters (Wizard, Cleric, Druid) all get. Spell slots are fewer, but the added flexibility means fewer slots are wasted. Spell damage scales with spell level instead of caster level, but save DCs scale with character level instead of spell level. The details of the mechanics are different, the points at which classes and encounters might be balanced are different, but casters get many spells, can swap them out via preparation, and spells are powerful, described in natural language that leaves plenty of room for player creativity & DM interpretation, and should feel like they're really magical.
Then you should have no problem with 5e.Wanting more creative play outside of narrow parameters isn't the same as wanting anything to be "profoundly broken,"
You'll note that Celtavian's party succeeded, in spite of not jumping through said hoop. So, apparently, it wasn't that bad.Not a defensible design. It's railroading, plain and simple: "Don't do what the author wants you to do, even if it doesn't occur to you or it's just plain dumb? Too bad."
Concentration does change the way you'd play a wizard relative to 3.5 - you can't layer the 3 or 6 or 12 or more most-useful buff/protective/whatever spells on yourself and/or your party. You have to choose the best spell for the situation among the concentration spells you have prepared. Spells without that limitation, you can still layer, of course. The up-shot is that the selection of that spell is a more meaningful choice, and, that you are likely to expend fewer slots even when firing up a nova or combo of some sort.Not to beat a dead horse, but the concentration rule is what makes it so the wizard can't screw around too much with the environment.
Well, feats are optional, so even if you got 'em published, as a player, there's no guarantee you'd get to use 'em.I'm hoping when they come out with a magic book we get some feat options that allow a bit of customization with the casters. All but one feat in the PHB is geared towards martials or general.
As far as relative customization options, though, there are 5 purely-martial archetypes and something like 30 for casters. All classes have some sort of casting or magic-using archetype/sub-class. So there are already a tremendous amount of customization options just in picking your class and domain/school/etc, not to mention known spells (when you don't just automatically get the know your whole spell list) and spells you choose to prepare and cast (if you allow yourself to consider RP as well as optimal effectiveness in those choices).
It's not like it was easy in 3.5 - you had so many spells to choose from, so many slots, and so many potential combos to choose from, implement and track. Concentration, fewer slots, and no item make/buy leaves you with less to track and manage, but more interesting and meaningful decisions to make. Less difficult in the sense of tedious, more difficult in the sense of challenging.You also have far fewer spell slots and must use them sparingly. You don't have easy access to scrolls or potions, so no additional spell reservoir. It all makes playing a manipulation wizard extremely difficult.
Again, to put the edition comparisons in perspective, 4e gave martial classes more and more varied abilities than any ed before or since, and 4e casters were only a little superior to them, while, in 3.5, casters were overpowered to and beyond the point of casually dominating play without even trying at all but the lowest levels. 5e could indeed, be said to be between those two extremes - to start. It does, however, encourage an attitude of acceptance towards variants that leaves open the possibility that a DM open the floodgates to a more 3.5 style of play experience, or try to fix it up to a level of class and/or encounter balance closer to that of 4e, or tweak it a little further towards classic Gygaxian dungeon-crawling.It's definitely a different experience than 3E. It's nowhere near as weak and limited as 4E, but it's nowhere near as powerful as 3E.
I had heard of the surprising relative effectiveness (due, apparently in part to Bounded Accuracy) of that classic spell in this edition. Don't expect I'll get to try it anytime soon, but I'm glad you got to have some multi-attacking DPR type fun with it.I don't mind it myself. I had fun with powerful 3E casters. It's fun to have to work to find ways to be effective. I started using a spell I've never used before: animate objects. I destroyed some opposing creatures with it. Ten darts flying around a battlefield stabbing people is kind of fun.
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