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

[prosfilaes]

Optimal with respect to what?

The game. RPGs are much more complex, but D&D and similar games have a tactical subgame with pretty clear victory conditions. On ENWorld, I won't say you're doing it wrong if your wizard gets involved in melee, but if I'm playing with you and your wizard is engaging in melee and sucking up far more in healing (or worse, raises) then value they're generating in damage, my character is going to be peeved, and so am I.

 

[Azurewraith]

As for wizards in melee I did make a wizard once stated and played him like a fighter didn't cast many spells due to int being dumped. Roderick was fun to play he came from a long line of wizards and was pushed into it by his father even though he had a 6pack for a brain

 

[S'mon]

This is mostly a byproduct of how disproportionately ineffective ranged combat is in D&D

Compared to real life medieval weaponry, D&D ranged combat is vastly more effective relative to
melee combat.

 

[DEFCON 1]

So once again, we fall into "D&D is making me play in a way I don't want to" territory. And it's still a BS excuse. It's the 4E Weapon Expertise feat complaint all over again.

No one is forcing ANYONE to play characters in a way they don't want to. The game especially isn't. The only people who are being forced to play in a way they don't want are those that are forcing THEMSELVES to do so, because they are afraid of other people looking at them funny and saying "Why aren't you playing correctly?"

If you don't want Clerics or Druids to be blaster characters... don't select those spells. Just because the rules in the book allow you to prepare any spell from the Cleric or Druid list, doesn't mean you HAVE to. You can effectively go through the book and create your own "spell list" for your character that only has certain spells in it. Just like if you're a Cleric and don't ever want to be a healer... you just tell your fellow players that you do not and will not ever prepare Healing Word or Cure Wounds as spells, and effectively cross those spells off your own personal Cleric spell list. And the same holds true for players who don't want Clerics and Druids to be blasters. Wipe those spells off your character's Cleric or Druid spell list. There! You're all set! You get what you want.

Or if you happen to be the DM, as part of preparing your campaign... you can easily create your own amended spell lists for every class so that they fit into whatever theme or schtick you are looking for in your personal campaign world. You're allowed to. No one's going to stop you. If it gives the world a more precise vision, then that's awesome!

But again... that's on you to do that. That's your job as a DM when making your campaign, or your job as a player when making your character. You decide what you will and won't do, what you will and won't use, and most importantly STAND UP for yourself and your right to play the game in that way. And if anyone complains you are "nerfing" yourself by doing so... you tell that person to F-off. Grow the wherewithall to play how you want to play.

But don't get mad that WotC is making you HAVE to stand up for your choices like that because didn't write the books in exactly the way you want to play. It's not their job to write the book so that you never have to make that personal choice.

 

[Azurewraith]

So once again, we fall into "D&D is making me play in a way I don't want to" territory. And it's still a BS excuse. It's the 4E Weapon Expertise feat complaint all over again.

Snippy snip
.

Couldn't agree more play your way there is no wrong way to have fun. All my rogues only ever use daggers why I find them cool are they the weakest weapon in game almost but hey I have fun. Do I miss the d8 from a rapier some times but meh fun

 

[BryonD]

So once again, we fall into "D&D is making me play in a way I don't want to" territory. And it's still a BS excuse. It's the 4E Weapon Expertise feat complaint all over again.

No one is forcing ANYONE to play characters in a way they don't want to. The game especially isn't. The only people who are being forced to play in a way they don't want are those that are forcing THEMSELVES to do so, because they are afraid of other people looking at them funny and saying "Why aren't you playing correctly?"

A lot of people strongly prefer (or even feel compelled) to play the game exactly as written.
5E, as written, is a dumbed down game. But now that I've played that card, let me be clear that I don't think 5E is dumbed down AT ALL.
5E is built to be adaptable. And in that pursuit RAW 5E takes the low hanging fruit parts of 3E and 4E and establishes them as a baseline.
It is more impressive to me that they made this game so intelligent that the RAW system can be adapted in a wide ranges of ways. Making a super simple game is easy and "dumbed down". Make a super simple foundation which can then be built upon in diametrically opposed directions is really impressive. It is more impressive than making a solid, complex game. That adaptable foundation though, is going to have some issues if taken alone.

If you are a new player, then there is still so much depth to even just the foundation that you won't notice it. And it isn't unlikely that patches those holes for a newbie will add more pain than gain.

But if you have been playing numerous systems for decades, then you really should be underwhelmed by RAW 5E. And you probably don't even notice it because half of your houserules are so reflexive you don't even consider them.

But there are a lot of people inbetween who want more out of the game, but have not made the step into really making the game their own. Transition can be messy.

 

[innerdude]

Compared to real life medieval weaponry, D&D ranged combat is vastly more effective relative to
melee combat.

That may be true, but in my decade-long experience with 3.x/PF it never seemed to play out that way. That may be because we largely stuck to "core" 3.5, with only the occasional "Complete Class X" thrown in, and no one who was interested in "power gaming" ever cared about it enough to do it with an archer-focused class. Ranged combat effectiveness and damage output just never seemed to scale as quickly as hand-to-hand. Some of this is that damage increases via archery is multi-stat dependent (DEX + STR), versus hand-to-hand which is only STR dependent. That, and the crit ranges for ranged weapons were always less probable.

This always led to the dilemma in our groups ---- "If I'm going to be hanging back from combat shooting stuff, why don't I do it using 6d6 fireballs, instead of 1d8+5 arrows?"

 

[Tony Vargas]

Once upon a time, a lot of effects were siloed into specific classes. If you wanted an area of effect damaging spell, you needed a wizard (or a very high level druid or cleric).

Druids picked up Call Lightning at 3rd level in 1e, but, yeah other AE high-damage had to wait.

If you wanted to fly, teleport, or summon monsters, you needed a wizard. Now, druids are summoners, and clerics can make you fly.

Druids could shapechange into birds or bats at 7th level, Summon Animals from the get-go, Summon Insects, Call Woodland Creatures, & Conjure Elementals, and use Transport Via Plants to teleport a pretty fair distance. I'm actually kinda pleased with 5e's take on the Druid being closer to the original than it's been in a while.

I brought up summon monsters for a reason actually. I LOVE summoners. Always have. Played them all the way back to 2e and probably in 1e as well. I loved how you could call up a small army of minions to do your bidding. Tons of fun for me. Now, the only way i can actually play a summoner is play a Druid? Since when are druids summoners?

1e AD&D. Not the greatest thing to do with 'em, and not able to summon just anything, anywhere, but plenty of it.

By making most of the spell lists very similar - everyone has area effects, everyone has mobility effects, everyone has effects that are similar to each other - and then opening up other classes spell lists to differing classes, 5e has made every caster pretty much the same thing.

I don't think that's fair. Having the same slots/day just makes spells and spell levels remotely practical to try to balance & map against eachother. Sharing some spells saves space, and the price in complexity & confusion is small (personally I find looking up spells in a single alphabetical list annoying compared to the old-school class/level lists, but it's efficient for space and quickly looking up a specific spell). Classes are still differentiated by features and the specific differences found in their spell lists.

Also, Warlocks stand out with a different resource mix, entirely.

To me, this is the problem with ubiquitous magic. It's made all the classes play very similarly to each other.

It may be a bit more pronounced with all the spell re-cycling going on, but casters have always had a comparable set of resources useable for a range of functions, with a lot of practical overlap in all editions, as well as outright sharing spells in most. The differences are achieved in class features and the specific mix of spells and in those unique spells that every class gets (except Sorcerer, EK, & AT who all use sub-sets of the wizard list, IIRC). Setting aside that a specific domain might let you cast fireball, for instance, Flame Strike and Fireball are both AE fire damage, but they're still quite distinctive. Likewise Lightning Bolt and Call Lightning or Fire Bolt, Produce Flame, & Sacred Flame.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

That may be true, but in my decade-long experience with 3.x/PF it never seemed to play out that way. That may be because we largely stuck to "core" 3.5, with only the occasional "Complete Class X" thrown in, and no one who was interested in "power gaming" ever cared about it enough to do it with an archer-focused class. Ranged combat effectiveness and damage output just never seemed to scale as quickly as hand-to-hand. Some of this is that damage increases via archery is multi-stat dependent (DEX + STR), versus hand-to-hand which is only STR dependent. That, and the crit ranges for ranged weapons were always less probable.

This always led to the dilemma in our groups ---- "If I'm going to be hanging back from combat shooting stuff, why don't I do it using 6d6 fireballs, instead of 1d8+5 arrows?"

The thing about archers in 3.5 is that, because they didn't have to move to hit their target, they could pretty much always get off a full attack. And Rapid Shot existed. So it's not so much a 6d6 fireball vs. a 1d8+5 arrow as it is 6d6 vs. 2d8+10 (with an off-chance of 3d8+15).

And it really bugged me that the way to be an effective archer was through arrow spam, because that didn't square with my idea of archery at all. But now it's 5th Edition, rogues can sneak attack at range with their one attack, and it's all good.

 

[Rod Staffwand]

So once again, we fall into "D&D is making me play in a way I don't want to" territory. And it's still a BS excuse. It's the 4E Weapon Expertise feat complaint all over again.

No one is forcing ANYONE to play characters in a way they don't want to. The game especially isn't. The only people who are being forced to play in a way they don't want are those that are forcing THEMSELVES to do so, because they are afraid of other people looking at them funny and saying "Why aren't you playing correctly?"

If you don't want Clerics or Druids to be blaster characters... don't select those spells. Just because the rules in the book allow you to prepare any spell from the Cleric or Druid list, doesn't mean you HAVE to. You can effectively go through the book and create your own "spell list" for your character that only has certain spells in it. Just like if you're a Cleric and don't ever want to be a healer... you just tell your fellow players that you do not and will not ever prepare Healing Word or Cure Wounds as spells, and effectively cross those spells off your own personal Cleric spell list. And the same holds true for players who don't want Clerics and Druids to be blasters. Wipe those spells off your character's Cleric or Druid spell list. There! You're all set! You get what you want.

Or if you happen to be the DM, as part of preparing your campaign... you can easily create your own amended spell lists for every class so that they fit into whatever theme or schtick you are looking for in your personal campaign world. You're allowed to. No one's going to stop you. If it gives the world a more precise vision, then that's awesome!

But again... that's on you to do that. That's your job as a DM when making your campaign, or your job as a player when making your character. You decide what you will and won't do, what you will and won't use, and most importantly STAND UP for yourself and your right to play the game in that way. And if anyone complains you are "nerfing" yourself by doing so... you tell that person to F-off. Grow the wherewithall to play how you want to play.

But don't get mad that WotC is making you HAVE to stand up for your choices like that because didn't write the books in exactly the way you want to play. It's not their job to write the book so that you never have to make that personal choice.

Sorry, we thought this was a place to have discussions about 5E's design and mechanics, including the core assumptions of the designers, prevailing trends in the industry, the types of game worlds these choices create, and the relative merits of each.

But your post has shown that discussing opinions with fellow players is an exercise in futility since people can play the game however they want and that game forums are completely pointless. Thanks!