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

[The Crimson Binome]

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

From what I recall, you cast it directly into the container, and not having a container would cause the spell to fail. Conjuring a ball of water into the air is not the reality which the spell describes. This isn't 4E, where the fluff is mutable as long as the mechanical effect is the same. That way lies madness.

If you were a wizard, you might be able to research a spell that created a bunch of water as a sphere in the air, but that's because wizards actually control their power and know what they're doing. A wizard spell of Water Orb could be used to fight a fire, or just make people damp, or fill some containers if you had a funnel, because it can do anything that you could do with that amount of water. A priest spell of Create Water will fill some containers, because you're supposed to drink it, and that's why the spell exists.

 

[Lanefan]

From what I recall, you cast it directly into the container, and not having a container would cause the spell to fail. Conjuring a ball of water into the air is not the reality which the spell describes. This isn't 4E, where the fluff is mutable as long as the mechanical effect is the same. That way lies madness.

1e has it that the water just appears roughly where the caster wants it to, all in one mass. If you've put containers out they'll catch some of it, or you can have it appear inside one container, or it can just splash to the ground and be a flashy way of putting out the campfire. But it's not all that much water - 4 gallons per level, capped by what a cubic yard will hold (which is I think about 65 gallons).

A priest spell of Create Water will fill some containers, because you're supposed to drink it, and that's why the spell exists.

The water's specifically noted as being drinkable, yes, but I've never seen that as being the only reason the spell exists.

Lanefan

 

[Mephista]

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.

That's not how outliers work. You don't dismiss one because it doesn't fit your theory - you need evidence of some reason. And it doesn't take into account creating Light - that's a traditional cleric spell, and it again is very flashy and obviously magic. You can objectively prove that clerics do it. There are other examples as well. I'm sorry, but you're being illogical here. There are direct examples that contradict your theory. Logically, that makes your stance incorrect.

If you want to run things this way in your own game, sure, more power to you. But you cannot claim it for a universal fact of the game in any edition.

 

[Mephista]

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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Oh, I'm sure its a take off of the warden - the playtest version of the Ancient paladin was actually called the Warden. Its different enough, hoewver, that I'm not comfortable with making a direct comparison. Even if we make that claim, though, as a Defender, the Warden was actually rather slow and without movement abilities, iirc.

As for it being fey themed? It claims to be fey themed in the subclass's own writeup. The book itself makes that claim.

I get where the Ancient paladin came from. I get what they're aiming for. I just think that they failed in their execution and made a subclass that wasn't internally consistant with too many ideas mixed in.

 

[DeJoker]

Most divine spells are supposed to be subtle, and produce effects that could reasonably be denied.

Really and where within the guidelines do they say that is the requirement for divine spells? Because frankly in my worlds clerics have always been required not to cast their spells subtlety (unless the deity was all about subtlety) because the deity (most of them being rather vane) wants everyone to know exactly who is supplying that person with power so as to increase their worshipper base.

Yeah, the era of subtle divine magic was really in AD&D and earlier.

No.... I have played/GM'd DnD since the 1st Edition and clerics and subtle never went hand in hand -- in fact that was one of the beefs of the players in that day in age because the subtlety oriented deities spells were not subtle -- you had to be loud and proud as a cleric ... and a wizard for that matter -- actually casting any spells was considered to be quite obvious per the guidelines or what you might call RAW

 

[Caliban]

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.

AD&D 1st Edition: Clerics had Command, Spiritual Hammer, Animate Dead, Sticks to Snakes, Flame Strike, Glyph of Warding, Blade Barrier, Earthquake, Gate, among others

None of these strike me as particularly subtle.

 

[Yaarel]

Notice Gate, Planeshift, and planar travel.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

AD&D 1st Edition: Clerics had Command, Spiritual Hammer, Animate Dead, Sticks to Snakes, Flame Strike, Glyph of Warding, Blade Barrier, Earthquake, Gate, among others

None of these strike me as particularly subtle.

Command is possibly the least magical spell of all time. You tell someone to do something, and they do it. That's not magic.

Spiritual Hammer and Animate Dead cause things to move around, when usually they don't. They're exactly the sort of thing which are easy to fake. The same is true of Blade Barrier, possibly, I don't really remember that one.

Sticks to Snakes, they could have been snakes all along. If you cast Earthquake, then an earthquake could have happened anyway. There's reasonable doubt.

Flame Strike is an outlier, because it causes fire. Pillars of fire don't normally just happen for no reason. I guess Light might not be subtle, if you cast it on an object rather than a point, but if you do cast it on a point then there is no magical effect that you can look at and declare as obviously magical.

Most of what a priest could do, could be done without giving an appearance of obvious magic. Sometimes you had to do things that couldn't be done subtly, because the required effect was too great, but even those were done with less flash than the arcane equivalent. Regardless, teleporting twenty feet as a second level spell doesn't fit with that.

 

[Caliban]

Command is possibly the least magical spell of all time. You tell someone to do something, and they do it. That's not magic.

Spiritual Hammer and Animate Dead cause things to move around, when usually they don't. They're exactly the sort of thing which are easy to fake. The same is true of Blade Barrier, possibly, I don't really remember that one.

Sticks to Snakes, they could have been snakes all along. If you cast Earthquake, then an earthquake could have happened anyway. There's reasonable doubt.

Flame Strike is an outlier, because it causes fire. Pillars of fire don't normally just happen for no reason. I guess Light might not be subtle, if you cast it on an object rather than a point, but if you do cast it on a point then there is no magical effect that you can look at and declare as obviously magical.

Most of what a priest could do, could be done without giving an appearance of obvious magic. Sometimes you had to do things that couldn't be done subtly, because the required effect was too great, but even those were done with less flash than the arcane equivalent. Regardless, teleporting twenty feet as a second level spell doesn't fit with that.

None of this is true. Sorry.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

None of this is true. Sorry.

None of it is not true. Sorry.

Regardless, it hasn't been that way in years. Teleporting paladins don't go against the "modern" aesthetic, where you can have chaotic neutral paladins, and where even clerics of Pelor are shooting lasers out of their hands. It only seems off because teleporting wasn't traditionally a thing that low-level divine casters could do. Likewise, turning into a bear wasn't something that any old druid could do, until much more recently. Dramatic, obvious magic was limited to high-level divine casters. The whole game has been shifting towards making magic more visible, ever since AD&D, and it's very much a case of YMMV on how lame that is.