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

[EzekielRaiden]

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!

Well, that is the Standard Fifth Edition "Helpful" Response (SFEHR): why are you asking for help??? Rulings not rules! Whatever you want is always fine!!!

That said, though, I don't really think that is what DEFCON 1 was saying. Rather, he gave specific examples of how it is possible to 'fix' many of these problems merely through making your preferences clear, whether as player or DM, and then actually applying those preferences to your behavior. If the existence of a specific option bothers you, it is well within your power to ignore it, or remove it if you are the DM--always has been, always will be.

 

[Hussar]

Thing is, it's not that cut and dried. It's not easy to avoid having effects that turn your caster into just another wizard.

I think warlocks have done an excellent job on this btw. Tons of flavour and, really, because warlocks just have so few spells, it doesn't overshadow their other class abilities.

But, as far as Druids, clerics and bards go, it's an uphill battle to not look like just another wizard. I mentioned war priests and that's a good example of a cleric that does not play like a wizard. The war priest's class abilities mean that standing off and blasting and buffing is not a particularly effective thing to do.

Otoh many of the other cleric, Druid or bard builds pretty much default to just another wizard.

Can you make one that doesn't? Sure. Of course. But is it easy? Or is it easy to simply fall into the role of just another wizard?

Imo the system very strongly influenced players in the latter direction.

 

[GSHamster]

I think you hit on the main reason when you invoked Harry Potter. D&D always "reflects" the state of the fantasy genre. Part of the attraction is "I'm going to play a character like X" where X is a famous character.

The fantasy genre as a whole has moved to ubiquitous magic. Harry Potter, Dresden Files, Final Fantasy, Warcraft, etc. are all worlds where wizards constantly use magic. You can even consider superheroes as fantasy, and modern superheroes generally get continuous use of their powers.

Thus modern D&D has moved to ubiquitous magic as well. However, I think D&D is following the trend in the fantasy, not setting it.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

(although I don't recall the druid having access to charm and hold person).

Yup, they did.

 

[DEFCON 1]

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!

No apologies necessary. Go right ahead.

I will note though, that only discussing the designers intent does not actually solve anyone's problems. The book is printed. It isn't changing. If you don't like the ubiquitous of magic in 5E... well, too bad. There's nothing you can do about it at this point.

So I was actually just... you know... moving forward. Providing a solution. But if none of you WANT a solution and would rather just continue to wallow in your own annoyance... hey, feel free.

 

[innerdude]

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.

It makes it a bit better, but fireball is still hitting multiple targets at once, and foes still take half damage even on a successful save. To say nothing of the fact that being forced to do nothing but full attack Rapid Shot with a bow every single round of combat sounds like an exercise in tedium.

But again, my original point was, if you want magic to feel "magical," and you want it to not be ubiquitous, broader character competencies is one of the ways to do it. In both the case of a highly optimized archer and a full caster, neither one has anything particularly effective to do in combat if they're not hot button spamming their best abilities. Give a character both a hammer AND a screwdriver (and maybe a crescent wrench and drill) and it's amazing what happens.

Magic ubiquity is a by-product of a class-based system that is designed at least in part to incorporate niche protection.

 

[Sunseeker]

No apologies necessary. Go right ahead.

I will note though, that only discussing the designers intent does not actually solve anyone's problems. The book is printed. It isn't changing. If you don't like the ubiquitous of magic in 5E... well, too bad. There's nothing you can do about it at this point.

So I was actually just... you know... moving forward. Providing a solution. But if none of you WANT a solution and would rather just continue to wallow in your own annoyance... hey, feel free.

Honestly I still feel like this is less of a game issue and more of a setting issue. Lets say we make "NewGame", NewGame has 10 classes, 9 are casters of some variety, 1 is a non-caster. Yet, New Game is set in Worldland, and in Worldland there are a wide variety of different ways to use magic....however to use magic is difficult, dangerous and in some places, illegal, so casters are actually very rare in the setting. Most people in Worldland who aren't mundane PeopleFolk(TM) are variations of the one martial class in NewGame. A dozen varieties of soldier, rogues, rangers, and so forth.

D&D certainly has progressively allowed more classes to use magic, no argument there. But assuming you had the option to multiclass, all NewD&D has given us is pre-baked multi-classes classes. What is an Eldritch Knight but a Fighter/Wizard? An Arcane Trickster but a Rogue/Wizard? A Way of Four Elements Monk but a Monk/Sorcerer?

We could strip out these options in NewGame, but if we're not going to prevent players from multiclassing, it's natural that the rule-bending nature of magic is going to attract people after "hit things with a stick" becomes worn out. But what has NewGame really accomplished in removing these default options, or even outright banning multiclassing? At the end of the day, it is more important where you are playing the game than what is available to play.

Playing a Water Mage in the Sahara might be difficult. Playing A Sand Sorcerer on the other hand may not. So if your setting is the Sahara, why worry about the fact that someone could play a Water Mage? The default assumption of the setting is that water is rare. Even though both Sand Sorcerers and Water Mages have equal number of classes in the rulebook (that is to say, one), their prevalence in the setting is unequal.

So if Worldland says that magic-users are rare, even if you have a whole party of magic users (4-6) that's 4-6 people in the WHOLE WORLD. 4-6 out of potentially millions of people. Just because the game story focuses on them doesn't make them any more or less prevalent in the world. You're talking about a .00004% difference in the magical population of a setting. Statistically, it's insignificant!

So if magic use is "too prevalent" for your (hypothetical your) tastes, just say it's rare in the world. Poof, now it is! I'm currently running a super-low magic setting, where there are probably oh, 5000/1 magic users. The whole PC party uses magic though! That just means there are at least 20000 (I have 4 players) people in the world...which there are way more than, so it's not a problem, not even close.

To sum up: The Game(TM) is just a set of rules. Without a setting to determine prevalence the fact that all 10 classes can use magic in some way is meaningless.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

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?"

Do you still find this to be true in 5E, or just 3.5? Because I don't see how anyone in 5E can fail to see that ranged combat specialization utterly crushes melee in all but the nichest of niche situations.

 

[Azurewraith]

Do you still find this to be true in 5E, or just 3.5? Because I don't see how anyone in 5E can fail to see that ranged combat specialization utterly crushes melee in all but the nichest of niche situations.

I think ranged attacks even edge out magic now that the game is based on an attrition system as from my experience people are more stingy with higher level spell slots and rather fire balling 3guys they wait and wait untill that 100orc war band marching through a ravine may or may not show up anecdotal ofc. Ranged also out puts the same amount of damage as melee out side of maybe GWM+PM which runs off the assumption of A: Feats or B: specifically building your character to fit that bill(optimizing), which like you said is a niche case.

I guess at the end of the day there will always be a best option and min-maxers will always find it.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Not really. In the AD&D PHB the druid has a 2nd level spell "Produce Flame" which when hurled can ignite flammable objects, but it has not damage listed. I guess a generous GM might allow it to do damage as a torch on a successful hit (in B/X this was 1d4; I don't think AD&D ever had an official damage range for a torch).