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

[Lanefan]

Priests are given spells for a reason, and abusing those spells in order to show off is the quickest way to lose them.

I have to disagree with this one.

Priests are given spells for a bunch of reasons. Depending on the deity giving said spells, one of those reasons might very well be to show off - in effect to advertise how powerful the deity is by way of what its Clerics can do. Any deity concerned with power (this would include most war deities, probably all evil-authoritarian deities, all Dwarven deities, and some wanna-be-monotheistic paladinic deities) or flashy chaos (some party deities, some destroy-everything deities) is going to want its Clerics to show off their power at every opportunity.

Of course, there's also lots of deities who would probably prefer their Clerics to be way more subtle - any Thieving deity, any deity of secrets, any deity who might be seen as a challenger to another but hasn't got the power yet to back it up, and others - and that's cool too. But to say they all have to be like this is overkill.

You mistakenly assumed all divine casters were required to serve a deity who gave them their spells.

It works this way in my game, at least; however...

That was not always true. Simple example is druids who worship nature as a whole rather than a specific god. Others had clerics and paladins devoted to ideals or concepts.

... it works this way in many games also. D&D over the editions hasn't even been consistent on this; so no surprise individual tables aren't.

Lanefan

 

[Mephista]

Maybe it was possible to run things in such a way more easily in old editions, but its not what I would consider a default either. Gods, generally speaking, are generally pretty obvious with their interactions in a lot of settings, and are objective facts. And, in the settings where gods aren't objective? Clerics having magic is generally accepted, but the -source- of said power is left open to interpretation.

Hells, aren't there the fish monsters in the 5e MM who create their gods by sheer force of their mental belief? And enough that such belief grants magic?

I feel like you're taking one option among many, taking it to an extreme, and trying to suggest that its the standard that everyone should follow. That's never been the case as far as I can tell.

 

[DeJoker]

I ran and played D&D 1E until AD&D Advanced came out and I clearly recall there was a guideline that stated that if a spell had a verbal component that you had to speak it out loud such that anyone within in ear shot could hear it, further any spell with a somatic component required gestures that could easily been seen. With those two caveats in place, and the fact that most of the cleric spells either had a verbal and/or somatic component how on earth can you say those spells were meant to be subtle. Oh sure you could wave the verbal and somatic components (aka simply ignore that requirement) but then you are not playing the guidelines as written and are thus playing what everyone calls Homebrew. Conversely you could do the some thing with the 5e rules. If you want to make all divine magic have the requirement that it must be subtle then remove the verbal and somatic components and state that any abilities that are showy in nature must been done subtlety or they will not work -- now you seem to have what you are talking about but again it is a Homebrew because it is not the guidelines as written any more.

 

[Arilyn]

In practice, I've never seen a session go badly because the players sidestepped a challenge via flight or teleportation. Never. Not even once.

Me either. Also some of those flying/teleporting characters find themselves all alone and in danger....

 

[DeJoker]

Nobody is talking about real religions or mythologies. Just because it happened in some story once, that has zero bearing on D&D, unless it was actually incorporated into the rules or setting at some point. If you wanted to use the Bible as a guide, then divine magic actually would want to look as impressive as possible, to try and upstage wizards.

Things that make you go hmmmm So I wonder where do you think the designers for these games got the ideas for some of these spells and abilities... pulled them out of their magic hats ?? No... they pulled many of them from real historic religions and mythos stories -- Also did you know that the priests of many real religions (not just Judaism/Christianity) of the past often did things to impress people in order to increase the number of believers? I am not sure where you got the idea that religious folk either in reality or a fantasy setting would go around and keep their religion hidden that is unless they were followers of a persecuted religion but that is a special situation rather than the norm. Now in nearly every historical text I have read, and most fantasy novels as well, religion is almost always an out in your face kind of thing as much as possible in order to sway unbelievers into being believers which includes doing miracles. Now grant you not all religions did miracles for show-boating reasons but they almost never hid what they were doing when they did it, barring again a persecuted religion.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Now in nearly every historical text I have read, and most fantasy novels as well, religion is almost always an out in your face kind of thing as much as possible in order to sway unbelievers into being believers which includes doing miracles. Now grant you not all religions did miracles for show-boating reasons but they almost never hid what they were doing when they did it, barring again a persecuted religion.

Unless you're reading a D&D novel, divine magic is rarely so powerful that anyone can just walk around performing obvious miracles wherever they go. Even in AD&D, the rules present a priest who does much, much more actual magic than anyone in any book that doesn't star a wizard named Harry. If you had a normal pseudo-Medieval European fantasy world where there were dozens of priests of various orders and everywhere they went they were performing obvious magic as a sign of their divine power, then that would no longer resemble a pseudo-Medieval European fantasy world anymore.

Given the premise that some people want to play in that sort of more grounded setting, it must be the case that spellcasting priests are exceptionally rare and/or they simply don't go around casting obvious spells. That must be the case, if playing in such a setting is even possible.

 

[Caliban]

Unless you're reading a D&D novel, divine magic is rarely so powerful that anyone can just walk around performing obvious miracles wherever they go. Even in AD&D, the rules present a priest who does much, much more actual magic than anyone in any book that doesn't star a wizard named Harry. If you had a normal pseudo-Medieval European fantasy world where there were dozens of priests of various orders and everywhere they went they were performing obvious magic as a sign of their divine power, then that would no longer resemble a pseudo-Medieval European fantasy world anymore.

Given the premise that some people want to play in that sort of more grounded setting, it must be the case that spellcasting priests are exceptionally rare and/or they simply don't go around casting obvious spells. That must be the case, if playing in such a setting is even possible.

...Have you read the Bible? At all? Or any other religious text?

Sticks to Snakes is lifted directly from Judeo-Christian mythology (and I believe Persian mythology before that), as is causing Earthquakes, knocking down city walls (the walls of Jericho), and stopping the sun in the sky. Other religions have similarly spectacular feats performed by their prophets and holy men.

Divine magic being subtle and easily dismissed is only true in a few specific settings, and sure if you want to replicate a version of medieval Europe during the Dark Ages that is one way of going about it. But it has never been the default for any edition of D&D. Your "must be the case" assertion would only be true for a home brew campaign that had that as a premise. Not D&D in general.

 

[Aenorgreen]

Unless you're reading a D&D novel, divine magic is rarely so powerful that anyone can just walk around performing obvious miracles wherever they go. Even in AD&D, the rules present a priest who does much, much more actual magic than anyone in any book that doesn't star a wizard named Harry. If you had a normal pseudo-Medieval European fantasy world where there were dozens of priests of various orders and everywhere they went they were performing obvious magic as a sign of their divine power, then that would no longer resemble a pseudo-Medieval European fantasy world anymore.

Given the premise that some people want to play in that sort of more grounded setting, it must be the case that spellcasting priests are exceptionally rare and/or they simply don't go around casting obvious spells. That must be the case, if playing in such a setting is even possible.

That setting would also need arcane magic users to be exceptionally rare and/or they simply don't go around casting obvious spells. That exact same logic therefore requires wizards to be exactly as subtle as the divine casters to keep that setting. That means your supposed distinction between arcane and divine doesn't logically hold.

 

[Ancalagon]

...Have you read the Bible? At all? Or any other religious text?

Sticks to Snakes is lifted directly from Judeo-Christian mythology (and I believe Persian mythology before that), as is causing Earthquakes, knocking down city walls (the walls of Jericho), and stopping the sun in the sky. Other religions have similarly spectacular feats performed by their prophets and holy men.

Divine magic being subtle and easily dismissed is only true in a few specific settings, and sure if you want to replicate a version of medieval Europe during the Dark Ages that is one way of going about it. But it has never been the default for any edition of D&D. Your "must be the case" assertion would only be true for a home brew campaign that had that as a premise. Not D&D in general.

In 2nd ed (when I started playing D&D) the biblical/mythical references were pretty obvious to me. It seems that we are slowly stepping away from that, and the "identity" of clerical magic, for better or worse...

 

[Lanefan]

Unless you're reading a D&D novel, divine magic is rarely so powerful that anyone can just walk around performing obvious miracles wherever they go. Even in AD&D, the rules present a priest who does much, much more actual magic than anyone in any book that doesn't star a wizard named Harry. If you had a normal pseudo-Medieval European fantasy world where there were dozens of priests of various orders and everywhere they went they were performing obvious magic as a sign of their divine power, then that would no longer resemble a pseudo-Medieval European fantasy world anymore.

Given the premise that some people want to play in that sort of more grounded setting, it must be the case that spellcasting priests are exceptionally rare and/or they simply don't go around casting obvious spells. That must be the case, if playing in such a setting is even possible.

You mean something like Kurtz' Deryni books, where all magic is frowned upon particularly by the church...which means priests that can do magic are really hosed if they're ever discovered...

Yeah, that'd be a setting where all magic, not just Clerical, would want to be kept very low key. Then again, most of the magic in that series is quasi-psionic; which is a whole nother can o' fish.

Lanefan