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

[Shasarak]

The shift of healing resources from spells and magic items to characters was in no way 'hit point inflation.' Now, if you want to go into 'healing inflation' we can, again, look to 3e (and the WoCLW) for the high point of the trend, rather than 5e.

No, the "high" point of the trend is not 3e. The high point is 4e.

Why would you look at the benefits of Con in 4e and ignore half of them? Yes, it no longer gives you bonus hit points for every level but it does give you bonus surges which, for those following at home, give you a minimum of 25% of your total hit point pool.

Any character going into an Encounter has at minimum at extra 25% on top of his hit point total available and this just balloons upwards when you add potential spells and class abilities to the total.

One healing surge is the equivalent of a minimum of +1 bonus to hit points per level to the weakest classes but is a minimum of +1.5 bonus to the strongest classes which means that a 18 Con in 3e gives you +4 hp per level whereas the same 18 Con in 4e is giving you a minimum of +6 hp per level per surge.

I really thought that people had worked all this out all ready by now.

Multiple WoCLW/LV > Healing Surges > HD

Actually in reality when you do the maths, it goes something more like:

HD + Magic > Healing Surges > HD > Multiple WoCLW/LV

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Actually in reality when you do the maths, it goes something more like:

HD + Magic > Healing Surges > HD > Multiple WoCLW/LV

If you're using all of the guidelines in 3.5 (wealth by encounter, wealth by level, item availability by city size, etc), then you do quickly reach a point where out-of-combat healing is completely trivial. The wand is just way too cheap for what you get out of it. I didn't believe it either, until I played in a long-running Pathfinder campaign that actually stuck pretty close to that, and out-of-combat spells (and natural healing) stopped mattering entirely around level 8. It wasn't much fun for me, because I was playing the healer, and I used to have a lot of fun with deciding who should get the biggest cure spells and who could probably survive until tomorrow. (I used it as a manner of positive/negative reinforcement, to teach reckless characters to stop being so reckless because we didn't have the resources to clean up after unnecessary damage; it turns out, nobody will learn anything when they have a bundle of twenty wands that can solve all of their problems.)

At the very least, Healing Surges placed a cap on how many of them you could use in a day. It was a lot like they got rid of the (essentially unlimited) Wand of Cure Light Wounds, and replaced it with everyone having their own built-in limited-use wand. And sure, the limit was tied to Con, but any limit at all on out-of-combat healing meant that HP totals - the number you would return to after every fight, if you could - became less important by comparison.

 

[Shasarak]

If you're using all of the guidelines in 3.5 (wealth by encounter, wealth by level, item availability by city size, etc), then you do quickly reach a point where out-of-combat healing is completely trivial. The wand is just way too cheap for what you get out of it. I didn't believe it either, until I played in a long-running Pathfinder campaign that actually stuck pretty close to that, and out-of-combat spells (and natural healing) stopped mattering entirely around level 8. It wasn't much fun for me, because I was playing the healer, and I used to have a lot of fun with deciding who should get the biggest cure spells and who could probably survive until tomorrow. (I used it as a manner of positive/negative reinforcement, to teach reckless characters to stop being so reckless because we didn't have the resources to clean up after unnecessary damage; it turns out, nobody will learn anything when they have a bundle of twenty wands that can solve all of their problems.)

That is a completely different problem because honestly if I was playing with another Player who thought they could push me around and tell me what to do just because they controlled the healing then I would find a way to make them irrelevant very quickly as well.

Well, either that or kill their character in their sleep and tell the Player to make a proper Cleric and get with the program this time.

At the very least, Healing Surges placed a cap on how many of them you could use in a day. It was a lot like they got rid of the (essentially unlimited) Wand of Cure Light Wounds, and replaced it with everyone having their own built-in limited-use wand. And sure, the limit was tied to Con, but any limit at all on out-of-combat healing meant that HP totals - the number you would return to after every fight, if you could - became less important by comparison.

Healing Surges did put a (very high) cap on healing per day. In my experience I found that it was actually the melee Strikers like the Rogue or Ranger that tended to run out first followed by the melee Healers and squishy Controllers while the Defenders never ever ran out.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Well, either that or kill their character in their sleep and tell the Player to make a proper Cleric and get with the program this time.

A proper Cleric encourages the party to be frugal with their resources. I'm here, in this dungeon, trying to not die. I will not tolerate some suicidal idiot who feels entitled to our shared healing, because that kind of behavior is going to get everyone killed.

If I have to let one moron die so that the rest of us may live, then that's a choice I'm willing to make. With luck, they'll take the hint and stop being so reckless before it gets to that point.

Edit: I mean, this is supposed to be a game about teamwork, and I enjoyed my role as the one budgeting our magical healing. The fighter should trust me to do that job, just as I should be able to trust the fighter to dispatch our enemies without taking unnecessary risks. If either of us fail, then the whole party fails.

 

[Shasarak]

A proper Cleric encourages the party to be frugal with their resources. I'm here, in this dungeon, trying to not die. I will not tolerate some suicidal idiot who feels entitled to our shared healing, because that kind of behavior is going to get everyone killed.

If I have to let one moron die so that the rest of us may live, then that's a choice I'm willing to make. With luck, they'll take the hint and stop being so reckless before it gets to that point.

Well, yes and no. Leeroy Jenkins is a thing after all but those players tend to self select after a while of charging in by themselves.

Then again "Know your role" is also a thing which is why it is good to have other options available to cover for weak points in the group.

Edit: I mean, this is supposed to be a game about teamwork, and I enjoyed my role as the one budgeting our magical healing. The fighter should trust me to do that job, just as I should be able to trust the fighter to dispatch our enemies without taking unnecessary risks. If either of us fail, then the whole party fails.

Which is why I always laugh when people like Tony talk about using infinite Wands when I can spend my money on something else more relevant because our party healer covers our healing for free. Spending money on healing is just a mugs game.

 

[Tony Vargas]

No, the "high" point of the trend is not 3e.

Whether you're talking about the original topic of hp inflation or the easy availability of between-combat healing, it is. High point, and arguably beginning. PC hps in 3e could go higher than in other editions, because CON bonus added at every level and CON didn't have a hard cap (and you had CON boosting items). WoCLW healing quickly became trivially available - virtually unlimited, while surges were & HD are daily resources.

Healing Surges did put a (very high) cap on healing per day. In my experience I found that it was actually the melee Strikers like the Rogue or Ranger that tended to run out first followed by the melee Healers and squishy Controllers while the Defenders never ever ran out.

I've seen a Defender 'do his job too well' and be the first one out of surges. But, yeah, especially early on, it was the melee strikers, typically the Rogue, who would run out the fastest. It wasn't all intra-encounter tactics, attrition over the adventuring day was a significant factor to manage, too.

I mean, this is supposed to be a game about teamwork, and I enjoyed my role as the one budgeting our magical healing.

Sure, but once they broke out the WoCLW, you could just prep different spells and go all CoDzilla....

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Which is why I always laugh when people like Tony talk about using infinite Wands when I can spend my money on something else more relevant because our party healer covers our healing for free. Spending money on healing is just a mugs game.

I used to agree, before direct experience taught me otherwise. The spell slots that a Cleric could cast on healing are more efficiently used for buffs and - very occasionally - offensive damage/removal spells. Not that there's anything wrong with buying permanent magic items, mind, but it's just much cheaper to buy the healing (and use spell slots to buff) rather than buying useful wondrous items (and using spell slots to heal).

The sad fact of D&D is that each character has a finite number of adventuring days in them. Every dragon you slay brings you one day closer to retirement. Even though you might look at expendable items, and think it's silly to spend permanent wealth on temporary buffs/recovery, the reality is that permanent items only have finite use - it doesn't matter whether you have fifty scrolls of Invisibility, or a ring of infinite Invisibility, if you only get fifty opportunities to use it before the campaign is over.

The clearest example of this phenomenon comes from Final Fantasy (the original, which is just an unlicensed D&D game). A white mage could learn the PURE spell for 4000 gp, allowing you to remove poison by spending a level 4 spell slot; or you could use that cash to buy 50 PURE potions, allowing you to remove poison a total of fifty times without spending a spell slot. Given that you'd only be playing the game for forty hours total, and only fighting a couple hundred fights against monsters that could poison you, it's generally the better move to go with the potions.

The Wand of Cure Light Wounds, and the whole expected economy which supported it, made out-of-combat healing into something that wasn't the Cleric's job anymore. It wasn't necessary, and trying to fulfill the old roles under the new paradigm was a lesson of inefficiency.

 

[Jabborwacky]

I'm still of the opinion that the 3.5 healing paradigm is worse than 4th edition's healing surges due to a tangental issue: There were a number of other easily created, low-cost wands that could eliminate many of the conditions a DM could use to make the near infinite healing wands irrelevant. For instance, a DM might think of using shadows to attack the party, which dealt ability damage. A player could feasibly gain access to a wand of lesser restoration for the same price as a wand of cure light wounds provided the creator was a paladin. After hit points, there is ability damage, and ... that was kind of it. Everything else was subtly or very directly a save-or-die effect.

It's also an issue of trying to express the value of magic items in the same exact terms used for the fantasy world economy. If you looked at the cost of a +5 magic sword and the cost of an entire castle, there was no contest. The "cost" of the +5 magic sword was many magnitudes greater than that of a castle. The cost of magic items were not meant to place them in terms of the fantasy economy, but where they belonged in player character advancement. Expressing magic items in terms of gold created a misconception about their place in the game. Certainly there should be a lot of these cheap wands around, right? Yet it takes an item crafting feat with a high level requirement to produce wands, unlike the relatively low level requirements of the brew potion feat.

 

[Hussar]

If I can make one or two comments about the effect of cantrips on combat...

A lot of the actual play of cantrips depends greatly on party composition. In our AD&D game which ran from 2013-2015 while waiting for 5E to come out), the front rank of the party (3 characters) formed a defensive line behind which the rest of the group sat. A cleric in AD&D had no missile weapons to speak of, so if they weren't in that front rank, they basically cast bless and waited for the combat to end. That was with nine characters - PCs and henchmen.

In our D&D 5E games, a more typical party size is 4 characters. In that situation, the archetypal group of a fighter, cleric, rogue and wizard ends up with the fighter and cleric in melee, while the rogue and wizard are behind. With such a composition the use of cleric cantrips in combat becomes more problematic.

Beside, what cantrips are we talking about? I find this a major flaw in the argument that cantrips turn everyone into faux-wizards. Quite simply, most classes don't have (per the PHB) access to a good selection of attack cantrips.

Let's look at them:

Bard: Vicious Mockery
Cleric: Sacred Flame
Druid: Poison Spray, Produce Flame, Shillelagh, Thorn Whip
Sorcerer: Acid Splash, Chill Touch, Fire Bolt, Poison Spray, Ray of Frost, Shocking Grasp
Warlock: Chill Touch, Eldritch Blast, Poison Spray
Wizard: Acid Splash, Chill Touch, Fire Bolt, Poison Spray, Ray of Frost, Shocking Grasp

Just by examining the spell lists, it quickly becomes obvious that neither the Bard nor Cleric are at their best when just spamming cantrips. If the Bard actually wishes to deal significant damage, a bow or rapier is far more effective. Likewise, the Cleric has sacred flame, which at least deals damage, but against a significant number of creatures is not as effective as a weapon. Certainly at lower levels, your chances of hitting with a melee weapon are better than a monster failing a saving throw against sacred flame. There are situation where it is superior, but it isn't universally better than a weapon attack.

For the Sorcerer, Warlock and Wizard: They're wizards in any case. This is what they should be doing. I'll leave aside whether it is a good thing or not save to say that if in AD&D all Wizards were using wands of magic missile and wands of fire... then cantrips have simply taken the place of the wands.

Which brings us to the one class where cantrips do change how we perceive the class. Or, perhaps I should say, how some of us perceive the class. Historically, the druid gained spellcasting capabilities faster than any class in AD&D. They weren't a top-rank melee combatant - where the potential AC of the character made the most difference to their effectiveness. Clerics and Fighters were in plate armour and could stand toe-to-toe. The druid, in leather and shield, could not. (Barkskin improved AC by 1. It wasn't that good).

The fact is that a first-level druid was pretty awful. Yes, they got two spells (plus Wisdom modifier), but their first-level spells were forgettable - with the exception of animal friendship, which allowed them to take a wolf as a pet. So, as a first-level druid, you were really playing a wolf and his human side-kick! Honestly, this didn't change for many levels, even with their fast gaining of spells, they weren't getting all that many significant ones. (Call lighting? Awesome... but it required a storm).

The druid came into its own in 3E. A little too much so! Animal companion, shape-shifting, good utility spells and a fair number of attack spells...

So, I think there's a definite argument to saying the 5E druid changes how it is played. I am not, however, convinced that this is a bad thing. My experience with druids in my games indicate that (a) shapechanging trumps cantrip use and (b) shillelagh is awesome.

Cheers!

The trick though is that this is only half the equation. Yup, clerics only get Sacred Flame. But, they also get direct combat spells, several direct combat spells, every spell level. Let's not forget Domain spells on top, with things like Burning Hands, Fireball and Haste, depending on domain. It's not only that you get to spam direct combat spells, but also the fact that a significant portion of your daily load out can easily be spent on artillery type spells as well.

Or, put it another way. If my cleric has fireball, burning hands, flame strike, and various other things, how is he any different than a fire sorcerer or an evoker? Note, I've got no real complaint about the wizardly types firing away every round. That's fine. That's what they should be doing. But why is my cleric dropping fireballs several times per adventuring day?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Expressing magic items in terms of gold created a misconception about their place in the game. Certainly there should be a lot of these cheap wands around, right?

Right. The guidelines for whether an item was available were based on the cost of the item and the size of the community in which you were shopping...

Yet it takes an item crafting feat with a high level requirement to produce wands, unlike the relatively low level requirements of the brew potion feat.

5th level feat vs a 1st level feat, IIRC.

But the cost difference actually reflected that the potions were much easier to acquire. A potion of CLW was 50 gp, a wand of CLW 750 - so you had to be in a larger community to find wands for sale.

All fairly consistent, really.