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

[innerdude]

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, it's what you're best at and every round you're not shooting your bow is probably going to feel like a wasted round. Sometimes, you may switch to a sword to engage in melee, just like a cleric may switch to a mace to engage in melee if it calls for it, but I wouldn't be surprised if people who miss with their melee attack start to wonder if their +2 bonus from archery would have meant they had enough to hit.

Or you use a system that assumes characters are good at more than one thing. My current Savage Worlds character would be considered a "full caster" in relative D&D terms, but also has the highest archery skill in the party and several spells that are combat-oriented but don't do direct damage. The battlefield options available to me are massively more varied than simply "pew pew" magic.

Do I hold this round to get my +2 aim bonus and almost guarantee an extra damage die when I fire? Do I use my legerdemain spell to perform a dirty trick from 30 feet away on the opponent my hand-to-hand fighter is engaged with? Do I cast a damage bonus spell to give +2/+4 damage to the dwarf? Do I draw my short sword, roll into melee next to the fighter and use a defensive maneuver, giving the fighter a gang-up bonus? These are all viable, and depending on the situation, highly effective potential options.

But this kind of assumed broad competence is generally only possible in a classless, skill-based system. I don't know about 5e, but in 3e you'd have to be a multiclassed ranger/sorcerer of about level 8 and in all likelihood have a level of the Arcane Archer prestige class to do what I'm doing in Savage Worlds at the functional equivalent of level 2.

Now of course, I always had the option of focusing strictly on spellcasting. I could have totally stat dumped my fighting and shooting skills, and just pumped spellcasting to the max. But Savage Worlds wasn't meant to be played that way; it assumes as a system that characters will be broadly competent in a variety of skills. It's not to say I'd be "playing it wrong" if I min/maxed my spellcasting, but I certainly wouldn't be playing to Savage Worlds' strengths as a system and would certainly be cutting myself out on a great deal of the potential fun.

But on a related note --- There are no "cantrips" per se in Savage Worlds. Every spell cast has a real resource cost in terms of available power pool, and casting is not an automatically assured "thing." And to me, magic never feels like a "substitute" for something mundane.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I didn't say no example of risk is a valid example...

No, you just heavily implied that no matter what example I came up with you would find some grounds on which to categorically ignore it as "not valid," such as when I brought up a sub-class that adds risk to magic use which I have seen people provide testimony that they dislike specifically because they don't want the risk, and you ignored it as not valid by claiming that anyone not liking said option is doing so because it is "poorly designed." So rather than waste my time continuing to share my gathered evidence that players say "I don't want the risk", I skipped to the foreseeable end: that there is no example that you would accept as valid.

Prefixing your statement with an accusation that I didn't fully read your argument is rude, a slight

Your post clearly indicated that you believed I had not though of a particular thing. That particular thing was actually present in my post you were indicating did not have said thing.

So rather than being rude and assuming you were intentionally ignoring what I had said, I went the entirely not rude route of giving you the benefit of the doubt as to whether you had simply made a common mistake.

I think that's fine, but it'd be nice for you to explain what makes you feel that way.

I feel magic is special as-is because it does things beyond what can be done my normal non-magical means.

To me, a firebolt doesn't feel as special as a crossbow, although if I saw one IRL, I'd probably go bug-eyed. There's a lot you can do with RP and narrative, of course, but I think 5E has made magic more mechanical than...well...magical.

Everything in every game ever is more mechanical than magical - imagination, not the game rules, is the tool that must be used to make things magical.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

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.

Again, this is trying to make things relative, which is entirely the wrong approach here. There will always be someone better, and making unnecessary comparisons like that serve to hide the reality of the situation. Krillin was insanely powerful, but you can't see that when he's hiding in Goku's shadow.

If you take a standard level 6 Fighter (elite array), then that's someone who can take half a dozen arrows and keep fighting, and is easily capable of hitting someone in plate armor, dispatching an enemy every 3-6 seconds. And that's without any good magic items, weird feats, or power creep. This is already the stuff of legends. Most people would just die after taking one arrow. A level 6 Wizard can easily beat up half a dozen thugs, without even breaking a sweat or relying on magic at all. Why would you downplay that skill?

 

[Tony Vargas]

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?

Nope, all five daily-slot-using full casters (Bard, Cleric, Druid, Wizard and even Sorcerer) have the same basic slot progression table - in addition to sharing many of the same spells in their lists (the Sorcerer sharing /all/ it's spells with the Wizard, in the most extreme case).

 

[Azurewraith]

Nope, all five daily-slot-using full casters (Bard, Cleric, Druid, Wizard and even Sorcerer) have the same basic slot progression table - in addition to sharing many of the same spells in their lists (the Sorcerer sharing /all/ it's spells with the Wizard, in the most extreme case).

Just like to add bard also gets his unrestricted secrets as well so throws his list out the window.

Now I think about it there's to much homogenization going on. What's wrong with being a special snowflake Ala warlock?

 

[prosfilaes]

Again, this is trying to make things relative, which is entirely the wrong approach here. There will always be someone better, and making unnecessary comparisons like that serve to hide the reality of the situation. Krillin was insanely powerful, but you can't see that when he's hiding in Goku's shadow.

Going the other direction, when I'm watching the Secret of NIMH, and the mouse Mrs. Brisby does the oh-so-awesome feat of lifting a cinder block, I should scoff? Because according to your standard, as relative as any, but relative to baseline humans, that's a trivial feat.

If you take a standard level 6 Fighter (elite array), then that's someone who can take half a dozen arrows and keep fighting, and is easily capable of hitting someone in plate armor, dispatching an enemy every 3-6 seconds. And that's without any good magic items, weird feats, or power creep. This is already the stuff of legends. Most people would just die after taking one arrow. A level 6 Wizard can easily beat up half a dozen thugs, without even breaking a sweat or relying on magic at all. Why would you downplay that skill?

Where does it say that a level 6 Wizard can beat up a half dozen thugs without breaking a sweat? He certainly can't do it without getting hit.

For my convenience, I'm going to refer to the Pathfinder NPC Codex to find hard numbers. A Cutpurse (human rogue 1) has AC 16, HP 10, and hits at a +3 for 1d6+2 damage. An Adventuring Blacksmith (half-elf fighter 6) has AC 20, HP 61 and hits at a +12/+7 for 1d8+7. A Tribal Seer (half-orc diviner 6)* has AC 16, HP 41 and hits at +3 for 2d4-1. The wizard 6 is landing blows at the same rate as the rogue 1, for less damage, taking on average 3 hits to drop a rogue. Even ignoring flanking and sneak attack, four of these rogues are going to slaughter our Seer. The Blacksmith, on the other hand, can reliably take out one rogue a turn, sometimes two.

If we up the PCs to 12th level, we're really wasting the players' time with this battle. And the wizard tactically should get out of the way, because one Whirlwind Attack or Greater Cleave or the like is going to let the fighter take out the whole group at once. At worst, the fighter can kill three a turn. Unless the wizard enjoys battle, why would they get involved?

* If you don't like that build, we can flip the page for a halfling evoker 7: AC 19, but HP 37 and hits at a +2 for 1d4-2. These ACs include mage armor.

If my wizard 6 can't cast spells, it is life-threatening to for him to get involved in a battle with several level 1 rogues. It's a matter of a couple rounds and little danger for the fighter 6 to do so. Why should my character do other than stand in the back and watch if he's out of spells? Crossbow bolts cost money and aren't likely to make much difference.

Again, this analysis may be much different for 5E. But they should hold for all of 3E, 3.5E and Pathfinder.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Where does it say that a level 6 Wizard can beat up a half dozen thugs without breaking a sweat? He certainly can't do it without getting hit.

Okay, I might have gotten a bit caught up in hyperbole. I probably meant to say that a level 12 Wizard can easily beat up those thugs, because a level 6 Wizard is only the equivalent of a level 3 Fighter - not strong enough for six thugs to be entirely trivial.

Your thug examples aren't entirely appropriate to the topic at hand. They have heroic classes and the elite array. For just a regular thug, of which six are appearing in a gang, the best representation would be a level 1 warrior (standard array) with leather armor and a club. That probably comes down to a difference between 3.X and Pathfinder, though - Pathfinder had already made the shift to at-will magic for spellcasters (among many other things), and they made everything else in the world even more dangerous to try and compensate.

 

[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.

Again, it's a matter of context.

If the world's greatest archmage (level 20 wizard) and the world's greatest farmer (level 20 commoner) have a weapon duel, they're evenly matched. It either one faces off against the world's greatest cobbler (level 20 expert) they're likely to lose. Against the world's greatest warrior (level 20 warrior) any of the three is almost guaranteed to lose.

Wizards have traditionally been, and still are in 5e, at the lowest end of the totem pole of martial competence. Certainly they gain some competence as they level, but not against the larger threats that they now must face. They incremental BA increase from 3.x is most useful when they have to roll to hit a creature with a high touch AC with a spell.

It doesn't matter that by 12th level wizard can beat up a half dozen weaklings by himself. He's likely facing a half dozen trolls or worse by level 12, and that's not a fight the wizard will win with just a quarterstaff. Entering a melee like that is basically suicide for a wizard unless the DM goes out of his way to avoid killing PCs.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Wizards have traditionally been, and still are in 5e, at the lowest end of the totem pole of martial competence. Certainly they gain some competence as they level, but not against the larger threats that they now must face.

Sure, they are the worst at fighting, for their level. Against someone of their level, where the outcome would truly be uncertain, they should probably stop holding back and actually hit with the strongest things they have.

Not all fights are against your equals, though. When you're fighting something that's weak enough for you to not want to spend resources on, why can't that be the point where you get to show off your cool staff-fighting skills? Why do you need magic, even when it's not a life-or-death situation?

 

[Fanaelialae]

Sure, they are the worst at fighting, for their level. Against someone of their level, where the outcome would truly be uncertain, they should probably stop holding back and actually hit with the strongest things they have.

Not all fights are against your equals, though. When you're fighting something that's weak enough for you to not want to spend resources on, why can't that be the point where you get to show off your cool staff-fighting skills? Why do you need magic, even when it's not a life-or-death situation?

If the fight is no threat to the party then sure, you can hit it with your staff. Or use nothing but cantrips. At that point it's a style choice really, because that fight will be over in no time. Cantrips don't prevent you from using your "cool staff-fighting skills", they merely offer an alternate option to the player who envisions his character as a "master of the mystic arts".

I realize that using cantrips is likely more effective than swinging a quarterstaff, but in an insignificant fight no one likely cares about perfect efficiency. They're an opportunity to show off with no danger of character death.

There's nothing wrong with being a wizard who occasionally likes to throw down alongside the fighters when there's no real danger. I've seen it done. It's simply that not everyone wants to play that character every time. Having cantrips enables either choice to be a valid one. Lacking cantrips, the "master of the mystic arts" has to decide whether to waste a big gun, stand around doing nothing, or play against his concept and use a weapon. In my opinion, having a choice of styles is better than being forced into a particular style.