D&D 5E Why Has D&D, and 5e in Particular, Gone Down the Road of Ubiquitous Magic?

[innerdude]

D&D is not being written for you alone. The problem is that your preference, if applied to the wizard core class, crowds out those who want a "wizardly wizard". But if the wizard core class is a "wizardly wizard", then you can still get what you want through multiclassing and hybrid classes. (And really, the first clue that the "wizard" should be "wizardly" is in the name.)

In my experience nobody ever chose the wizard class because they actually gave a crap about "being a wizardly wizard," at least in terms of the in-game fiction. They chose the wizard class because it was the easiest way to break the game. Nobody actually wanted to have to deal with the spellbook, spell memorization, chances for memorization failure, spell components, XP drain, the whole "you must belong to a wizard school" assumed fictional positioning, weapon restrictions, etc.

They just wanted to be able to cast fireball, haste, prismatic sphere, and disjunction. Then after choosing the wizard class to "break the game," the typical players in my group spent the vast majority of their time trying to change their one-trick pony into a five-trick pony through multi-classing, feats, and prestige classes.

And I would know most of this first-hand, because I was the one who almost always played the magic-user and consistently got bored playing wizards who couldn't do anything except wait for their chance to stand up and say, "Wait wait wait! I have the perfect spell for this!"

I don't recall who said it when they mentioned it upthread, but I completely agree with the assertion that the D&D wizard has no real basis in any fantasy fiction. It's a self-referential trope. Gandalf is supposedly the most "iconic" representation of a D&D wizard, yet does half-a-dozen or more non-D&D-wizardly things in the first 50 pages of The Hobbit (Diplomance a high-level dwarf into letting a level 0 halfling rogue tag along with his party? Ride a horse? Succeed on several high DC bluff checks to trick trolls into staying up all night? Slay the Great Goblin with a sword? Lead an adventuring troupe overland through wilderness terrain?)

Strangely, the most D&D "wizard-ly wizard" I can think of in fiction off the top of my head is Walt Disney's version of Merlin from the Sword in the Stone cartoon, replete with purple hat and robes.

In any case, @Hussar's original question was why 5e went the way of ubiquitous magic. It's my contention that for a class-based RPG that "straitjackets" a class into using magic to do anything interesting or effective, ubiquitous magic is a natural, if not inevitable end state. And D&D further "doubles down" on this by making casting utterly reliable and consequence-free to practitioners.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Gandalf provided exposition. Tons of stultifying exposition, especially in the first book. Even when he defeated the Balrog, he did it 'off-screen' and then provided exposition about it later.

A rogue Charlatan with expertise in History and Deceive could do a pretty fair imitation of Gandalf. He'd need some fireworks, and a flashlight. Oh, and a wheelbarrow, of course, never forget the wheelbarrow.

I mean, that's true if there's no fourth wall and characters walk around aware of their own meta-ness in a Deadpool way, sure!

....but as long as Gandalf isn't aware of his metanarrative function, it can be hard to play a character that performs as him if you are constantly being reminded of it.

That's the thing: stories don't flow in real-world time, they flow in scenes and plot points and important events and character development and even flashbacks.

They flow in real-time, too. While you are reading. And for written stories, they flow in relative time - the time between scenes (books are freakin' magical). And ultimately you can get to a similar measurement: when Gandalf is in a scene, does he do something magical? What's the ratio of non-dialogue sentences involving him doing something magical to doing something non-magical?

It makes plenty of sense. Whenever you want/need to establish the character can use magic, you pop off with a cantrip, even if it's just prestidigitation or something, though, with the combat focus of traditional D&D, a combat-useable attack cantrip is a good idea.
You should also be able to do something much more dramatic, some of the time, or you're just part of the scenery. By the same token, you can't be doing that 'some of the time' thing too frequently or systematically, or it could undermine the story/setting.

The same considerations make just as much sense for any character-establishing trait, magical or otherwise.

Sure. This would all point to why 5e cut the spells/day down, but kept 4e's at-will magic: if your "I hit it with my sword" is "I blast it with firebolt," that is an appealing character distinction that happens over and over again.

Heck, this kind of thing is probably why 3e inflated spell numbers and brought cantrips back from 1e: more at-will magic.

It's not universal, which is why I'm fond of the close parity between martial weapons and cantrips - it's not really a big deal to shift from one to the other and back again.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Apologies if this is retreading something that's been discussed. I wrote it this morning but was unable to post it.

And those people would have been best served playing a fighter or rogue, since those classes got to do stuff every turn. But sure, let's just homogenize the stuff that makes different classes unique.

Actually, out of curiosity, I just tallied up the total number of class/specialization choices for magical and non-magical effects. If you want to play a non-magical specialization, you have 7 options. The remaining 20 options incorporate magic spells or spell-like effects (such as two monk traditions). I also only counted clerics and wizards as 1 each, rather 1 per domain/school.

I find it pretty crazy that there is such a huge focus on magic abilities, and I definitely agree with the opinion that it makes it all feel less magical as a result.

I don't think they're best served playing a fighter or rogue if what they want to play is a magic-user.

You realize that 7 out of 20 non-magical options is about the same as AD&D, right? Let's take a look at the 2e PHB (because it's sitting next to me). Non-magic includes the Fighter, and Thief. Magical options include the Paladin, Ranger, the Mage (I won't count the specialists), Cleric (I won't count specialty priests), Druid, and Bard. So you have 2 non-magical options versus 6 magical options. Proportionally, that's almost exactly the same.

That raises the question of how much specialization should actually matter. Fighter types are supposed to be the best at fighting, but if they're the only ones who ever make an attack, then their superiority doesn't matter at all - it's only specialists fighting other specialists, and that's the new baseline competency for fighting. Spellcasters don't need to worry about fighting at all, because they can spend 100% of the time doing the thing that they're specialized in.

I disagree. That's like saying that MMA isn't impressive unless you throw a 90-lb-weakling into the ring for the fighters to beat on, so that they can demonstrate their baseline competency. Clearly that isn't the case.

Fighter types, like all the other classes, can see their improvement in their opponents. If at level 3 you faced a pair of ogres and it was a hard fight, but at level 5 you fight three ogres and it's an easy fight, then you have obviously improved. You don't need the wizard to take the role of the goofy side kick just so that you can feel powerful. 5e expects you to reuse low CR monsters at higher levels. Keeping those creatures relevant is a key part of bounded accuracy.

It was something that was immediately apparent in 4E, and only somewhat obscured in 5E, that each character needs exactly one stat in order to power (almost) everything important that they care about. Personally, I think it makes for pretty boring characters (speaking solely on a mechanical level here) if the Strength score of the Wizard or the Rogue doesn't matter at all, because they never need to make a Strength-based check.

While there's nothing wrong with wanting to play a high strength wizard, expecting everyone to do so kind of goes against genre don't you think? A classic wizard archetype is the clumsy weakling who wields great magical power.

And it's also kind of depressing, on a philosophical level, if magic-using people forget that they're still people like the rest of us Muggles, and they never have to rely on mundane methods for anything. But again, that's just a matter of taste.

I've played both a wizard and an arcane trickster rogue in 5e, and those characters have frequently done things using mundane methods. Magic is not the answer to everything in 5e. Just for starters, your known/prepared spells are limited, so you can't possibly have the solution to every problem in your bag of tricks. You have to be selective.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

In my experience nobody ever chose the wizard class because they actually gave a crap about "being a wizardly wizard," at least in terms of the in-game fiction. They chose the wizard class because it was the easiest way to break the game. Nobody actually wanted to have to deal with the spellbook, spell memorization, chances for memorization failure, spell components, XP drain, the whole "you must belong to a wizard school" assumed fictional positioning, weapon restrictions, etc.

They just wanted to be able to cast fireball, haste, prismatic sphere, and disjunction. Then after choosing the wizard class to "break the game," the typical players in my group spent the vast majority of their time trying to change their one-trick pony into a five-trick pony through multi-classing, feats, and prestige classes.

The players in your group are not necessarily representative of D&D players as a whole. An anecdote is not data. And your personal experience notwithstanding, I find it hard to believe that you really, truly do not think the fantasy of a wizardly wizard is a draw for many players.

Strangely, the most D&D "wizard-ly wizard" I can think of in fiction off the top of my head is Walt Disney's version of Merlin from the Sword in the Stone cartoon, replete with purple hat and robes.

I don't think it's strange at all if the most "wizardly wizard" you can think of is the Walt Disney Corporation's take on Merlin. The House of Mouse has been selling us distilled, iconic archetypal characters for over eighty years. That's kind of proving my point for me.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I mean, that's true if there's no fourth wall and characters walk around aware of their own meta-ness in a Deadpool way, sure!

In a sense, there isn't a fourth wall in RPGs, since the players are both protagonists (or metaphorical actors or directors, depending on style) and audience.

ultimately you can get to a similar measurement: when Gandalf is in a scene, does he do something magical?

That's a better measure. A 'scene' could be part of a weeks-long trek or one duel in the context of a larger battle, for instance. One scene could cover a day, another a few moments. IIRC, Gandalf doesn't exactly do magic in every scene he's in, though he does do or reference something - display arcane knowledge or relate a personal experience from the distant past or whatever - that re-asserts his supernatural nature.

Sure. This would all point to why 5e cut the spells/day down, but kept 4e's at-will magic: if your "I hit it with my sword" is "I blast it with firebolt," that is an appealing character distinction that happens over and over again.

To a degree that works. To the degree that there aren't too many other PCs or NPCs swinging swords or casting firebolts, and to the degree that the difference between swinging a sword and swinging an ax or poking vitals with a dagger are as different as those between casting firebolt and casting acid splash or sacred flame, I suppose....

 

[The Crimson Binome]

That's like saying that MMA isn't impressive unless you throw a 90-lb-weakling into the ring for the fighters to beat on, so that they can demonstrate their baseline competency. Clearly that isn't the case.

It's more like saying that Gambit should occasionally get to swing his staff, and Cyclops should feel okay uppercutting a guy once in a while, even though Wolverine and Colossus are better at it. Remember, every single adventurer is proficient in multiple forms of weaponry. Nobody is just a chump.

Cyclops is good at punching. He can lay out your standard evil mutant in three hits. It's impressive, just by itself. Wolverine can do it in two, though, and Colossus can do it in one.

 

[Hussar]

So far, everyone has focused on the wizard, but, that's only one (or two if you count sorcerer) of the several full caster classes in the game.

What ubiquitous magic has done is turn every full caster into a wizard - i.e. a character who exists to bang out spells every round of every encounter. I mean, I'm currently playing a Land Druid at 6th level. He's carrying a magic weapon that he hasn't actually used in two levels. In fact, I'm not sure if he's actually made a non-spell attack in 6 levels. If he has, it's certainly not been many.

And that's my point. Why bother letting druids use weapons and armour? It's not like they're actually going to use them. Unless you're playing a War Domain cleric, clerics are in the same boat. Constant spell casting. Druids and clerics in earlier editions were generally front line or at least second line fighters (not the class, just the position) whose spell use was secondary to the class. That's WHY clerics got the best armour and almost the best weapons. A cleric wasn't supposed to be blasting away with spells every single round. A Druid wasn't supposed to be an artillery caster.

I mean, even in 4e, clerics weren't controllers. Clerics were leaders for a reason. It was recognised that clerics weren't primary spell casters like a wizard. But, 5e has basically taken all 4 of the neo-Vancian classes - Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer and Wizard and made them more or less the same. My Circle of Land Druid is a wizard with nature oriented spells. He does EXACTLY the same things that the actual wizard in the group does. He might be casting different spells, but, most of the time, it's still area of effect blasting and battlefield control spells.

There's more to this than just wizards.

And, again, how often does a class have to do it's schtick to feel magical? Fighters, sure, get their extra attack, but, their sub class is coming into effect far, far less than a full caster is casting his or her memorised spells. Again, 6th level Druid has 11 spells per day. Assume 6-8 encounters per adventuring day, he's still using a full spell every combat, plus out of combat, plus rituals. By higher level, he should be using memorized spells virtually every round. Shorten the adventuring day, which, I believe, many people do, and there's no reason for a memorisation caster to hold back - blast away with memorised spells every round and why not? You aren't going to run out.

The idea that the system works because of opportunity costs presumes an awful lot about individual tables.

 

[Tony Vargas]

What ubiquitous magic has done is turn every full caster into a wizard - i.e. a character who exists to bang out spells every round of every encounter.

Back in the day, wizards didn't actually get a lot more spells than the next full casters, thanks to bonus spells for WIS in 1e, probably fewer than a Cleric or Druid (especially given the druid's spell table) at most levels. So, now, full casters all have cantrips - if that means they can get by with fewer slots and broken spells, I'm not see'n how it's a bad thing.

And that's my point. Why bother letting druids use weapons and armour? It's not like they're actually going to use them.

:shrug: It doesn't actviely hurt to give characters options they'd logically have, that aren't that good compared to their character defining ones.

I mean, even in 4e, clerics weren't controllers.

The WIS build were called out as secondary controllers.

But, 5e has basically taken all 4 of the neo-Vancian classes - Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer and Wizard and made them more or less the same.

5, you forgot Bard. And, those are the neo-Vancian full-casters, there are neo-Vancian half/third casters, as well.

And, again, how often does a class have to do it's schtick to feel magical?

Pretty often, I'd say. Each 'scene,' including a combat as a scene, maybe? That'd mean that, without cantrips, a caster wouldn't be 'feeling magical' until he had 10+ slots (enough for a 6-8 encounter 'day,' and a few non-combat scenes).

Shorten the adventuring day, which, I believe, many people do, and there's no reason for a memorisation caster to hold back - blast away with memorised spells every round and why not? You aren't going to run out.

The idea that the system works because of opportunity costs presumes an awful lot about individual tables.

That's an issue for each DM to grapple with.

 

[Uchawi]

Because the magic system is D&D's biggest brand differentiator. When playing GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy, the single biggest thing I missed was the D&D magic system including huge Fireball nukes. In basically every other way except magic, GURPS' combat system is superior. If you were playing a campaign where 95% of all characters were champion fighters, and loving it, you'd soon discover that you'd be loving it twice as much if you were playing martial arts fighters in GURPS instead.

Magic and monsters and level-based play are the things that D&D does well.

(That being said, I think 5E overdid it a bit. It wouldn't hurt to run a campaign where you have to roll explicitly for magic talent, say 5% for NPCs or 50% for PCs, as part of character creation. Could have separate rolls for arcane vs. clerical/druidic vs. warlock potential.)

I love GURPS magic much more than anything D&D has, unless you are into the Monte Haul magic rules everything at high level mind set. GURPS can go that route with magic knacks, power stones, or high mana. And it is simple on top of everything else.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Pretty often, I'd say. Each 'scene,' including a combat as a scene, maybe? That'd mean that, without cantrips, a caster wouldn't be 'feeling magical' until he had 10+ slots (enough for a 6-8 encounter 'day,' and a few non-combat scenes).

Yow. I guess that makes Gandalf a Warlord instead of a Wizard, huh?