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

[The Crimson Binome]

From a mechanical standpoint, the wizard has traditionally been a chump at fighting. No armor, the worst weapon proficiencies, the worst HD, and the worst Thac0 does not a great front-liner make.

That's my point, though. The wizard seems like a chump, by comparison, even though it's actually fairly skilled if you measure things objectively.

Would you consider a level 6 Fighter to be a chump? Using 3.x as a point of comparison, for the easy math, a level 12 Wizard is as good at fighting with a staff as a level 6 Fighter is with a sword. Other editions aren't too far off, though the exact formulae escape me.

We have a metric for skill at fighting, that metric is attack bonus (and HP), and a Wizard of any distinguished level is objectively good at fighting. I don't know why anyone would insist that they shouldn't fight.

 

[pemerton]

Speaking of literature, it's difficult to emulate popular characters in a D&D game, and I don't mean mechanically. Gandalf was a plot device, more or less, the DMPC who did very little on screen and basically kept the party focused on the goal of destroying the Ring. He provided knowledge that the party could not reasonably have, he provided "DM fiat" when it was necessary and was generally more of a story telling device than an actual character.

<snip>

Which is often one of my gripes about people comparing this game or that game or any game to some quasi-related literature character and wondering why we can't have characters or classes that "look more like the source material". Because the "source material" is stories! They're not games. They're not defined by their rules and their mechanics. They're used to teach a lesson.

<snip>

D&D games don't do that.

If by "D&D" you literally mean D&D, then maybe. If by "D&D" you mean fantasy RPGing, then I don't agree at all.

A FRPG can deal with thematic content ("teach a lesson", as you put it). And you don't need a "DPMC" to establish goals and drive the PCs towards them. The players can do that - and there ways of doing that can be located in the metagame, in the ficiton via their PCs, or both.

This is why I think mechanics matter. D&D has, historically, not had very robust mechanics for loremastery - which tends just to be a conduit for the downloading of the GM's backstory - nor for persuasion. But it is not impossible for a FRPG to have these things. And once you do have those things, a PC can become much more "wizardly" in the model of Gandalf without having to cast a spell to be so.

 

[pemerton]

Thinking about clerics and druids, you can really see, I think, what I'm talking about here. In AD&D, a cleric didn't have any direct damage spells until 2nd level with Spiritual Hammer and didn't get another one until 5th level spells. An 8th level cleric, outside of casting reverse Cure spells, has exactly ONE direct damage spell. That's it. Cleric spells were support. Druids were a bit better off with Produce Flame at 2nd and Call Lightning at 3rd, but, still, their spells were mostly based around support.

Which was fine. Both classes were pretty capable in combat. Clerics might have lagged a bit behind fighters, but, not significantly. Druids were no slouches either - decent weapons, and a decent AC, if you had the Dex for it. Certainly both were miles ahead of the Magic User in combat.

<snip>

Skip ahead to 5e and outside of war domain clerics, there's no reason, really, for clerics or druids to have any better weapon proficiencies than wizards. And, really, there isn't a whole lot of difference between them. The cleric and the druid are attacking with magic every single round.

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With the new magic system, every caster's schtick is to cast magic as often as possible. Every round spent not casting is generally seen as a wasted round. But, these classes were never based around casting before. You didn't play a druid because you wanted to drop a Moonbeam on enemies multiple times per day. You played a druid for the shape change and the ties to nature theme. How is pew pewing away with a Thorn Whip or Produce Flame any different than the warlock standing beside you dropping Fire bolt (or whatever the cantrip is called) every round?

<snip>

I guess my basic question is, why does every caster have to be a full caster? Why does being a caster mean that you are using magic every single round? Why can't we get some full casters, like druids and clerics, that aren't just wizard's in drag.

Maybe because they are, as you say, full casters. Spells are a major component of their class, it's an area where they are focused. If you want to mix it up more in combat and cast a spell maybe every other round then you have your paladins and rangers.

Really speaking, it's the same with the other classes, if you make a fighter focused on archery, you're probably going to be shooting a bow every round, because that is your focus

A fighter doesn't shoot a bow every round, though - only when fighting. When the action of the game moves away from combat, the fighter has to stop doing what s/he does best (fight, perhaps with a bow) and look for other options.

In AD&D the reverse of that tended to apply to clerics and druids: combat wasn't their main game (especially once the fighters get multiple attacks, at which point the lower attack bonus and lower rater of attack really start to show), and their spell casting often came into its own outside of combat (in what 5e calls the "exploration" phase of the game).

I think part of Hussar's "ubiquity of magic" concern arises from the desire to (i) make every class of roughly comparable capability in combat, and (ii) in the case of casters, to achieve that via spell-casting (because that's their primary shtick). At that point, pew-pew magic is practically inevitable.

 

[pemerton]

He seemed to be talking about combat which is why I restricted my comment to talking about combat.

How would you elaborate your comments beyond the combat context?

In my post, I think I was working towards the following conjecture: that "classic" D&D, by prioritising exploration over combat, made it feasible to have wizardly wizards who aren't just pew-pewers; but "modern" D&D, which priorises conflict (and especially combat) over exploration has lost that option.

 

[Hussar]

He seemed to be talking about combat which is why I restricted my comment to talking about combat.

Well, it really is all linked together. As I mentioned before, Clerics had exactly one direct damage spell by the time they were 8th level in AD&D. It's not like they were casting in combat obviously. Even Druids only have 2 by the time they get 3rd level spells and one of those took 10 MINUTES to cast. Again, for a large chunk of their time, they weren't casting in combat.

After all, nothing quite says druid or cleric like a dude hurling balls of fire every single round of combat. Which is what we get in 5e - either Produce Flame for Druids or (grr, name of spell escapes me and I'm too lazy to get off this couch to look up the name for the cleric one). Or, better yet, our handy dandy bard dropping fire bolts every round as well. That's certainly in keeping with bardic archetypes no?

IOW, there's virtually no reason why all full casters aren't dropping combat spells every round. Outside of combat, they still have more spells that they can be dropping multiple times. Any caster with Guidance effectively has proficiency in every single skill. More or less. After all, it just takes one round to cast Guidance and poof, +1-4 on that check, pretty close to proficiency bonus. Oh, and the added bonus of it actually stacking with proficiencies.

In our current group, our scout gets sent out after the druid turns him Invisible. Because, y'know, invisibility is a totally druidic thing to be doing. ((Note, Circle of Land Druid with ... Grassland? focus))

The classes are dropping spells pretty much every single encounter - either combat or non-combat. There's extremely few situations that come up that the classes aren't dropping spells of one shape or form. It would be fine, IMO, if it were one or the other. Clerics and druids typically did a lot of casting outside of combat - information gathering stuff, talking to animals, healing, that sort of thing. But, now? A druid is pretty much just a themed wizard. What distinguishes a bard from a wizard? Armour? Weapon? They barely need to use either one. Between Shield spells and decent HD, a wizard's just as good in the front lines as a bard. Other than some minor variations, all the core casters, save maybe the warlock, are virtually indistinguishable. Same spells, same actions, same play.

At least a fighter and a rogue and a ranger don't share much in common. A Battlemaster and a Rogue have virtually no shared mechanics. They play out very differently. The core casters? Between shared spell lists and common mechanics, everything might as well just be a wizard.

I mean, good grief, in our last session this morning, the warlock, the druid and the wizard all dropped fireballs at the same freaking time. Ok, the druid did it through a Staff of Fire. Fair enough. But, sheesh.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

After all, nothing quite says druid or cleric like a dude hurling balls of fire every single round of combat.

Not for the cleric, but hurling balls of fire has kind of been one of the main druid schticks for as long as they've been around. I never got a chance to play one in back in the day, but looking at their spell list, it has a lot of fire and lightning spells. (The major tradeoff was that they had terrible armor, compared to the cleric. They were a lot like a red mage class, aside from the nature theme and random shapeshifting.)

And, unlike wizards (who were fire-and-forget), the druid blast spells tended to stick around for the druid to keep manipulating every round - from Produce Flame and Flaming Sphere on the low end, up to Call Lightning and Lightning Storm on the high end.

Which isn't to say that they had a ton of spells and could do magic all day long (although bonus spells from high Wisdom helped), but when they did cast a spell it fit pretty well into this paradigm.

 

[prosfilaes]

Would you consider a level 6 Fighter to be a chump? Using 3.x as a point of comparison, for the easy math, a level 12 Wizard is as good at fighting with a staff as a level 6 Fighter is with a sword. Other editions aren't too far off, though the exact formulae escape me.

We have a metric for skill at fighting, that metric is attack bonus (and HP), and a Wizard of any distinguished level is objectively good at fighting. I don't know why anyone would insist that they shouldn't fight.

I think that 5th Edition changed it a lot with bounded accuracy. I'm not exactly a 5E maven, so I'm not sure about the details.

In terms of 3E, no, a level 6 Fighter is not objectively good at fighting. They're pretty nice if they're facing an orc, but their best bet for surviving a storm giant is that the storm giant correctly figures that the fighter is no threat to the giant. It's like saying that the Panzer was an objectively good tank, so this WWII tank should have no problem taking on a modern M1A1. A storm giant has a good chance of hitting with all 3 attacks on our wizard, for about 100 HP, whereas the 12th level wizard might hit that AC 27 only on a 20. It doesn't take much Wisdom to realize that this is not a good way to approach the problem.

 

[Azurewraith]

Wow that was alot of reading. Time to weigh in. To me I feel there is way to much magic built into classes and then they get to much at-will magic on top of that. Reduce cantrips down so a full caster gets 3 1damage based and 2 that can't deal direct damage, this makes cantrips feel more like a muscle memory thing as opposed to the Swiss army knife at current.

If a class gets some martial weapons and a armour Prof make them half casters without cantrips so they actually get to use them leave 100% spell flinging to locks, sorcs and wizards(even though locks are a different kettle of fish) even then due to only one offensive cantrip they may choose to attempt s weapon based attack due to resistance.

 

[Fanaelialae]

That's my point, though. The wizard seems like a chump, by comparison, even though it's actually fairly skilled if you measure things objectively.

Would you consider a level 6 Fighter to be a chump? Using 3.x as a point of comparison, for the easy math, a level 12 Wizard is as good at fighting with a staff as a level 6 Fighter is with a sword. Other editions aren't too far off, though the exact formulae escape me.

We have a metric for skill at fighting, that metric is attack bonus (and HP), and a Wizard of any distinguished level is objectively good at fighting. I don't know why anyone would insist that they shouldn't fight.

You can't look at a single variable, out of the context of the larger equation, and claim an objective assessment.

Yes, a 3e 12th-level Wizard had the same Base Attack as a 6th-level Fighter. However, the wizard was objectively terrible at fighting.

1) Typically, a Wizard would have a worse ability score related to attacking (whether that be Strength or Dexterity) because the primary stat for a Wizard is Intelligence, whereas the Fighter can dump Intelligence to instead have a high strength.

2) The Wizard has worse armor and weapon proficiencies than a 6th level fighter. A staff is not the equivalent of a sword, and robes are certainly not equivalent to plate mail (barring perhaps the rare magic item that is the exception).

3) The Wizard has likely focused his feats elsewhere than improving his ability to swing a staff. I played 3.x for many years and I never saw a Wizard with Weapon Focus. The Wizard probably didn't pick up Power Attack, so he's not going to hit remotely as hard as the Fighter against low AC targets.

4) Magic item distribution. If you find a magic sword, then the fighter gets dibs on it unless he already has a better sword. The wizard gets first dibs on wizardly items. At least that's how we play. Need before greed. So unless the campaign is Monty Haul, the wizard's numbers fall behind as a result of this as well.

5) Extra attacks. Yes, the wizard has one, but the fighter has two. Also, the fighter's second attack is significantly more likely to land (+ 7 BA versus + 1), and his even his piddly third attack is still better than the Wizard's (+ 2 BA versus + 1).

6) The level factor. Particularly in 3.x, monster AC's were prone to ballooning very quickly. A level 6 Fighter would be barely a speed bump to a CR 12 monster. A level 12 Wizard therefore would be even less than "barely a speed bump". Sure, if you dropped a level 12 Wizard into a level 6 party without his spells, he might be able to contribute enough to at least make a difference in combat, but the same cannot be said of a level 12 party.

Clearly, unless the campaign focus is on the high level Wizard regularly handing out beatings to low-level commoners, he is no paragon of martial prowess. That his base attack at level 12 matches that of a competent Fighter of level 6 is meaningless when you consider it in context. The Fighter's true attack bonus can be easily over + 20 by that level, whereas the Wizard likely has little more than his base + 6.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I guess my basic question is, why does every caster have to be a full caster? Why does being a caster mean that you are using magic every single round? Why can't we get some full casters, like druids and clerics, that aren't just wizard's in drag.

I thought that was what the Warlock and Bard *were*? Forgive me if I'm mistaken--I'm away from book at the moment--but doesn't the Bard have fewer total spell slots than pretty much every other "full" caster? And without the free prepped spells that Divine casters get (excluding Rangers for whatever reason), or Arcane Recovery/Sorcery points to recover slots, the Bard is left a clear notch below most other "full" caster classes. Similarly, while the Warlock always casts spells with a punch, how many it can cast per day is pretty heavily limited. I don't remember when the numbers increase, but you spend most of the single-digit levels casting only 2 spells per short rest. By the expected encounter math (regardless of whether it is actually used in practice*), that's only 1 spell per combat on average--or even less, if you use them out of combat too.

The one and only exception to all of that, the one place where all "full" casters are effectively the same is cantrips (well, give or take a couple cantrips). And much of your point appears to rest on that specific bit. So I think the real question is, "are cantrips spells?" Because you seem to be 110% behind the idea that they're precisely as magical as something that costs a spell slot--whereas I'd see them as being much, much less magical than most "proper" spells. Cantrips are intentionally the "workhorses" of magic. Anyone who specializes in magic picks up a few, because they're the dirt-easy basics almost anyone can learn (you even get one with that feat whose name escapes me).

If you view cantrips as axiomatically equivalent to spells proper, then it's pretty much a given that you're going to find "spells" to be ubiquitous, workhorse, mundane, and bland. Combat cantrips exist almost purely as "quality of life" things for full casters; as AaronofBarbaria more or less put it on the first page, full casters have gone from very frequently NEEDING to use tools they were explicitly bad at using, to having basic tools in their own wheelhouse to fall back on when the "big guns" are being held in reserve.

So, how much of your issue would be "resolved" by forcing Wizards et al. to pull out a crossbow, that they can't hit with worth beans, whenever they want to do damage without casting a spell proper? Or, in other words, removing all (or all ranged) damage cantrips?

*While many people are quite up-front about the fact that they don't follow the expected 6-8 encounters, 2-3 short rests, what minimal data I've collected, as flawed as it is, indicates that the number of rests between combats is either the same (1 rest:2 combats:1 rest:2 combats etc.) or there are more combats per rest, closer to 1 rest every 2.5 or even 3 combats. So the Warlock--and most other heavily short-rest-based classes--are, if anything, slightly behind their expected loadout on average, and may not cast any spells proper in some combats (until they reach much higher levels). But, as noted, they almost surely will cast cantrips.