D&D 5E Teleport /fly /misty step the bane of cool dungeon design is RAW in 5E

[KahlessNestor]

This is completely off topic, but I'm going to start a rant on the Oath of Ancients paladin here. Has nothing to do with movement spells, but just.... urggg.

So, one of the things I noticed almost immediately about the paladin is that each of the four core oaths seem to line up with each corner of the alignment block. Cavaliers, the Oath of Devotion, is your stereotypical LG type. The game even suggests that Devotion Paladins are devoted to LG gods. Oath of Vengence come up with dark knights, and has a very strong LN to LE vibe. Using fear to fight, being a necessary evil to fight the "greater evil" (which reeks of the Pact Primordial and Blood War) and zero mercy? I can see Asmodean paladins like mad here. Now, Oathbreaker is pretty CE - Madness, hatred, and undead are pretty stereotypical Abyss themes.

And that leaves Ancient with CG. First, there's the whole fey and elf theme going on, and those are both traditionally CG types. The beauty and art are likewise typically themes of CG gods. And then, we take these themes of light and life and laughter... and go with the destructive power of nature. Nature's Wrath. Ice Storms. Growing plants. Its all disjointed, not fitting together. I feel like we took a "fey themed paladin," naturally assumed to mean nature powers, and had them go hunt down drow and other evil fae/elf types, despite most of those actually being demon types more than anything. Why are you turning fey that are mostly good, and calling them Faithless? Ancient paladins don't have any relationship to faith!

Bleh. Its just one huge disjointed mess that doesn't flow well together.

I don't think Ancients are necessarily fey themed. They are definitely nature amd primal themed, though, which has links to fey, so I think it makes sense. The Ancients is a take off of the 4e Warden class, hence a lot of those druid abilities.

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[Yaarel]

I'm not really sure you can arbitrarily state how paladins use Misty Step. Sure, using it as a bonus move to close with enemies is one use, but, there are so many other uses for it as well, just like for any other caster.

Anyway, as I said, it just stands out to me. I'd probably not have any problems with paladins getting something that boosted their movement for a round - Expeditious Retreat (although that's a wonky name for a paladin spell ) - makes more sense to my sensibilities than Misty Step or Dimension Door.

Meh, I never really saw Avengers in 3e or 4e as paladins anyway. They were their own thing to me. And, I freely admit, this is my own personal bugaboo.

In 4e, an Eladrin Warlord with Misty Step (Feystep) was enormously popular, precisely to engage.

The Paladin of Ancients seems to me a 5e translation of this concept.

 

[Aenorgreen]

Flame Strike is an outlier among divine magic. Most divine spells are supposed to be subtle, and produce effects that could reasonably be denied. Also, sometimes, it doesn't work if the empowering deity decides that it shouldn't. Clerics aren't wizards, and they don't actually have any power of their own.

Letting a paladin teleport around willy-nilly is not in keeping with the traditional appearance of a divine spellcaster. It doesn't fit.

I think you are having a bit of a selective memory. Many cleric spells have been very obvious.
Cantrips
Light - object starts shining
Mending - break or cuts become whole
Create water - a container suddenly has gallons of water in it

1st level
Cure light wounds - can literally take someone from dying to full instantly
Inflict light wounds - can kill with a touch
Obscuring mist - fog suddenly forms from you
Summon Monster

Those were just the start of the list. I think it would be quite a stretch to say that the cleric wasn't doing anything if those are being cast.

Side note: 3.5 Spiritual Weapon spell needs just divine focus and specifies that it is making a weapon of pure force.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I think you are having a bit of a selective memory. Many cleric spells have been very obvious.
Cantrips
Light - object starts shining
Mending - break or cuts become whole
Create water - a container suddenly has gallons of water in it

Did the cleric do anything, though? I mean, you've labelled these as cantrips, which implies a later-edition take on them. I don't remember how Light used to work, back in the day, but Create Water is just about the definition of subtlety. If your water skins are suddenly full, where previously they were not, then something happened and you might chalk it up to a miracle, but it's hardly overt. It's not like you create a ball of water in the air which falls into the container. Likewise, Mending is more along the lines of a stage magician's trick.

1st level
Cure light wounds - can literally take someone from dying to full instantly
Inflict light wounds - can kill with a touch
Obscuring mist - fog suddenly forms from you

If you touch someone and they die, then you have plausible deniability, unless you set them on fire or something. If you touch someone and they don't die, when you might otherwise expect that they would, then maybe they just got lucky. Unless that wound was described as a gaping chest wound, before you cured it, you may not have had much of a visible effect on it; that really goes down to an issue of maintaining consistency with your narration, though.

If you're in the middle of combat and a cloud of fog appears around you, then that could just be a coincidence. They might not have reason to expect otherwise unless they had already seen a wizard in action, which was nowhere near the expectation for much of the game's history. Spellcasters were supposed to be rare.

Side note: 3.5 Spiritual Weapon spell needs just divine focus and specifies that it is making a weapon of pure force.

Yeah, the era of subtle divine magic was really in AD&D and earlier. Third edition marks a dramatic shift toward overt divine magic, which was finalized with 4E.

 

[Yaarel]

[MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]

Your characterization: Divine is subtle and ambiguous, Arcane overt and self-determined.

I think this is interesting flavor for a setting. Yet I dispute it is an assumption built into D&D itself.

If anything is built into D&D, it is: Arcane does everything, except heal, except Arcane Bard heals, and via Domains, Divine does everything too.

Heh. If there is one fact, it is the D&D spell system has always lacked a useful thematic organization.

 

[Yaarel]

Regarding AD&D.

The Wizard was the glass canon − fragile but dealing high damage once in a while.

The Cleric could do flashy stuff but was hamstrung from having spells that deal real damage.

 

[Aenorgreen]

Did the cleric do anything, though? I mean, you've labelled these as cantrips, which implies a later-edition take on them. I don't remember how Light used to work, back in the day, but Create Water is just about the definition of subtlety. If your water skins are suddenly full, where previously they were not, then something happened and you might chalk it up to a miracle, but it's hardly overt. It's not like you create a ball of water in the air which falls into the container. Likewise, Mending is more along the lines of a stage magician's trick.

If you touch someone and they die, then you have plausible deniability, unless you set them on fire or something. If you touch someone and they don't die, when you might otherwise expect that they would, then maybe they just got lucky. Unless that wound was described as a gaping chest wound, before you cured it, you may not have had much of a visible effect on it; that really goes down to an issue of maintaining consistency with your narration, though.

If you're in the middle of combat and a cloud of fog appears around you, then that could just be a coincidence. They might not have reason to expect otherwise unless they had already seen a wizard in action, which was nowhere near the expectation for much of the game's history. Spellcasters were supposed to be rare.

If that is your definition of suble, than wizards are equally as subtle. A wizard does power word kill and they coincidentally die. They just threw a pea and a ball of fire happened to show up. It is the same actions as a cleric casting. The fog just by chance came from the guy who just spent some time casting and waving their special object, putting him in the center. That light spell, it is exactly the same as the wizard got (they were 0 level spells.) Indeed several of the spells use the same write-up. Examples such as Air Walk, Animate Dead, Animate Objects, Antimagic Field, Banishment, Blade Barrier, Contagion, Continual Flame, Control Water, Control Weather, Create Undead. That is just the start of the list. All of those are cleric spells that share the description with arcane casters. If clerics are subtle then so are all casters. The distinction only exists in your conceptualization. Not as written. I think it is rather hard to say you had nothing to do with that permanant fire that produces light but no heat after you happened to put 50 gp of ruby on it.

 

[Aenorgreen]

Yeah, the era of subtle divine magic was really in AD&D and earlier. Third edition marks a dramatic shift toward overt divine magic, which was finalized with 4E.

How can you say divine is supposed to be subtle and then also say that it hasn't been for the the last 3 editions? When it hasn't been that way for 20+ years, I don't think you can keep saying that is the way it is supposed to be. You could just a well argue that AC is supposed to count down rather than up because that is how THAC0 worked. And get off my lawn!

 

[Lanefan]

Did the cleric do anything, though? I mean, you've labelled these as cantrips, which implies a later-edition take on them. I don't remember how Light used to work, back in the day, but Create Water is just about the definition of subtlety. If your water skins are suddenly full, where previously they were not, then something happened and you might chalk it up to a miracle, but it's hardly overt. It's not like you create a ball of water in the air which falls into the container.

What's to stop you creating a ball of water in the air that splashes to the ground?

Clerics also got Continual Light, back in the day; and Glyph of Warding could certainly produce some flash-bang if the right glyph was used. At higher level, Blade Barrier wasn't exactly sutble at all. But yes, in general they were more restrained than wizard-types.

Druids, on the other hand, were a mix - they could do the subtle stuff but also do some pretty flashy things.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

How can you say divine is supposed to be subtle and then also say that it hasn't been for the the last 3 editions? When it hasn't been that way for 20+ years

Well, 17 and counting...

I don't think you can keep saying that is the way it is supposed to be.

Why not? All it seems like he's trying to do is point out a reason that there's less of a difference between clerics and wizards in the newer editions than the early ones, and that this lessening of the difference might not be a useful development.

You could just a well argue that AC is supposed to count down rather than up because that is how THAC0 worked.

Don't care about THAC0 but AC counting down works just as well as counting up. It's just a different variant on the calculations a DM has to do on every swing...no net gain or loss in efficiency so whichever one you're used to, just stick with it.

Lanefan