D&D 5E Is Xanathars The New UA? AKA A Munchkins Book

[The Crimson Binome]

Ever had to run away from battle because you were so beaten up you thought you might be facing a TPK?

Ever been chased by an enemy when you need a short rest?

How about a short rest in the middle of battle? Ever wish you could do that?

If anyone sees you cast Rope Trick, then every enemy within a mile will be waiting for you when you try to leave. It is not subtle. It is a common second-level spell.

You're exaggerating again. It's an order of magnitude beyond one alternative. Just as other existing spells are orders of magnitude above that same alternative. It's a bad alternative. It's not a failing of Healing Spirit that Prayer of Healing is a bad spell, and not worth a 2nd level slot.
[...]
Cure wounds x spell level is the "baseline" for combat recovery? I'm...going to let that go....

If I'm being charitable, then Cure Wounds is the best healing spell that can be cast in combat, for many groups in many situations. (Realistically, it sees less use than Healing Word, and using Healing Word as the baseline reference would make Prayer of Healing seem even more amazing by comparison.) And in that case, which is most favorable to your argument, the out-of-combat Prayer of Healing is up to six times as efficient as Cure Wounds spam; it's literally the same amount of healing that you would get from Cure Wounds, but the effect is multiplied across the number of injured characters.

How much more efficient would you have out-of-combat healing become? Ten times? Twenty times? Why not just handwave it, and say that everyone is healed to full at the end of every combat?

Characters are more than HP. They are a mix of HP, Spells, Combat Superiority dice, Ki points, Inspiration points, Sorcery points, Action surges, Second Winds, Pact spells, wands, potions, etc.

And if you care about the resource management game, then you should try to evaluate the exchange rate at any given moment, in order to maximize your efficiency. How many HP will you save by spending a Superiority die? Or a Sorcery point? If you're fighting twenty orcs, then you'll probably prevent more damage by casting Fireball, than you could recover with any other method. In any given situation, it makes sense to ask those questions.

But sometimes you've taken HP damage, which brings you closer to death, and the only thing that fixes HP damage is HP healing. When you're down to your last few HP, no amount of non-healing resources can help you. (Feel free to ask the Warlord fanbase whether temporary HP, or any amount of inspiration bonuses to an attack roll, can make up for the loss of HP healing.) In those cases, it makes sense to do an apples-to-apples direct comparison of healing spells, and having one spell that is egregiously superior to every alternative is bad design.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Seriously. Check it out. They put that one word in all caps. There is no reason to do it except one: To SCREAM IT AT YOU. D&D is an RPG. A Role Playing Game. Characters play a role in a story.

If you're building a combo to get great abilities rather than to tell a great story, you're not playing D&D ... because you're not playing an RPG. You're playing a video game with pencils and paper. Play the RPG and all of this goes away.

Not to get off-topic, but role-playing means that you make decisions as your character would. If the decision you make as your character is to learn spells that are ten times less effective than the alternative, then the character you are role-playing is a moron.

 

[Treantmonklvl20]

Disagree. As Treantmonk himself points out, there are plenty of tools usable to be able to find a rope trick, if you suspect one is around:

1. Truesight (largely restricted to higher level/CR opponents; this also defeats illusions)
2. See Invisibility (the entrance is "invisible", so the entrance can be identified easily by someone using this spell; it also lasts an hour)

Note: the remaining items/spells depend on the entrance to the Rope Trick being an 'object' by 5e rules, which is not much of a stretch, since the usage of 'object' in the rules is basically synonymous with 'not a creature'.

3. Detect Magic + Faerie Fire (as 2 -- Faerie Fire notes that "[e]ach object in a 20-foot cube within range is outlined in...light" -- but the Detect Magic spell is required to identify the area in which to cast the Faerie Fire spell. Note that Faerie Fire has a range of 60 feet.)
4. Figurine of Wondrous Power - Onyx Dog ("...has darkvision out to a range of 60 feet and can see invisible creatures and objects within that range.")
5. Robe of Eyes ("You can see invisible creatures and objects...out to a range of 120 feet.")

And these are just the ones I can easily find in the SRD -- I'm sure there are other potential counter-measures available. Just end an adventure with a team of NPC assassins hiding in a Rope Trick somewhere in your PCs' stronghold, and I'm sure they'll come up with more options by the next session.

Frankly, I'm not sure if I'd have the monsters dispel the Rope Trick before the duration (and the short rest) ends, or if I'd rather surround it with a Wall of Force that contains a couple of high CR swarms.



If you're just talking about 'the wilderness', then sure, nobody's going to necessarily be doing guard sweeps and the like through the woods. But an evil temple, monster lair, or similar location? You've got some pretty chill monsters if they become aware that their home/base/etc. has been invaded by adventurers but decide to just passively sit around until the adventurers show up to murder them. There are always going to be exceptions (Castle Ravenloft, for example), but most places are probably not going to sit back and relax while a party of murderous PCs rests up in a side corridor, especially not if the resources required to find that party are fairly minimal.

--
Pauper

We are discussing the value of a low level party using Healing Spirit vs. Rope Trick to recover during an adventuring day and this is your comment. I have a vision of how a session with you might be...

Pauper DM: OK, and with that final attack, the Bugbear chieften clutches the arrow that landed in his chest, let's out a great bellow, and falls motionless to the cavern floor.

Fighter: Wow, tough fight! A Bugbear chieften and 4 bugbears!

Pauper DM: As mentioned, you heard this cavern system has 2 bands of bugbears, you think you've pretty much cleared the ones from the tribe of the bloody fist, but have not come across the tribe of the shattered skull yet. You suspect more bugbears and probably another Chieften may be in the caverns ahead.

Wizard: How's everyone doing? I've used one 2nd level spell and 2 first level, so I have half my spells left.

Fighter: I took 20 hp damage and used my action surge. I have only 16 hp left. I could go for a short rest.

Ranger: Those bugbears made a lot of noise in that battle, it won't be long before the others discover what happened here, they will be sending someone to investigate. I have some goodberries left, but not enough to heal that kind of damage.

Wizard: There was that storeroom a couple caverns back, why don't I cast a Rope Trick and we'll have a short rest.

Rest of party: Sounds good.

Wizard: (To Pauper DM) The party goes back to that storeroom off of the cavern where we faced the goblin dogs. I cast Rope Trick and we pull the rope inside and rest an hour.

Pauper DM: OK, and hour passes, your spell is about to end. You've successfully completed a short rest.

Party: We get our weapons ready and exit the Rope Trick, Fighter first.

Pauper DM: You hear the screams of the fighter, explosions, then silence.

Rest of party: What the...

Pauper DM: Yeah, well you rested in the Rope Trick, the Bugbears discovered the bodies of the Bloody Fist tribe, so the other Bugbear Chieften suspected you were still in the cavern complex somewhere.

Party: We could have gone outside!

Pauper DM: Well, he took out his Robe of Eyes and scoured the caverns and saw the entrance to your rope trick!

Party: A Robe of Eyes! Wow!

Pauper DM: Yes, then when he found it, he pulled out a bag of holding, opened it, and released the Swarm of Flameskulls that swarmed around the entrance to the Rope Trick!

Party: Wha....?

Pauper DM: Then he cast WALL OF FORCE to contain the swarm around the entrance to the Rope Trick! You fools! What did you think would happen? That the bugbears would do NOTHING???

Party: So, the bugbears in the adventure you made for our 4th level party, you have a chieften with a Robe of Eyes, a High CR swarm in his pocket, and can cast Wall of Force? You've got to be joking.

Pauper DM: Bah...MINIMAL RESOURCES!

 

[Gradine]

Not to get off-topic, but role-playing means that you make decisions as your character would. If the decision you make as your character is to learn spells that are ten times less effective than the alternative, then the character you are role-playing is a moron.

I'm not sure that the appropriate response to "badwrongfun" is "dumbbadwrongfun"

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I'm not sure that the appropriate response to "badwrongfun" is "dumbbadwrongfun"

You can certainly have fun, playing a character less intelligent than yourself. For many, that is not their preference, but it's no less role-playing for those who choose to do so.

My point is just that role-playing and optimization are often the same thing. For most people in most cases, "building a combo to get great abilities" is the role-playing solution, because they're role-playing as someone who is competent.

To contrast, treating the whole game like a work of fiction, and making decisions for your character based on what would be a good story, is pure meta-gaming. Leaving aside the question of whether it's bad or wrong, it's not role-playing.

 

[Gradine]

You can certainly have fun, playing a character less intelligent than yourself. For many, that is not their preference, but it's no less role-playing for those who choose to do so.

My point is just that role-playing and optimization are often the same thing. For most people in most cases, "building a combo to get great abilities" is the role-playing solution, because they're role-playing as someone who is competent.

My point is that role-playing and optimization can be the same thing, but it isn't always, and insulting the intelligence of players who don't think the same way they do (or, as you do in this post, the intelligence of their characters, which I'm not sure is that much better) is exactly the same kind of insulting, wrong-headed onetruewayism as the post you were responding to was, just for an alternative (some might say opposite) set of preferences. I would in fact make the argument that your qualifiers "often" and "For most people in most cases" are also exaggerations at best and just plain wrong at worst, as optimization is not as prevalent in the vast sphere of role-playing games as online echo-chambers tend to make it appear at first glance.

I that where you are right is that most people like to build characters that are competent at whatever it is they are supposed to be good at. I happen to think the line between "incompetent" and "perfectly, mathematically optimal" is quite a bit wider than you give it credit for, and I would in fact argue encompasses the vast majority of D&D 5e characters that exist and have ever existed and will ever exist in this reality, including most, if not all, Druids and Rangers who don't decide to ever memorize healing spirit (even if Xanathar's is open to them). It's actually pretty hard to build a truly incompetent 5e character. Suboptimal, sure, but there's a long difference between the two.

Tl;dr, you're mostly right by the letter here, mostly (or at least much more) wrong in spirit, and, most importantly, you're kind of a being a jerk.

Meanwhile, this...

To contrast, treating the whole game like a work of fiction, and making decisions for your character based on what would be a good story, is pure meta-gaming. Leaving aside the question of whether it's bad or wrong, it's not role-playing.

...is the biggest load of nonsense I've read a good long while, and I follow politics. There are many activities that fall under the realm of "role-playing" that lack structure, systems, or rules, and consist entirely of a shared storytelling experience, including many LARPs, and role-playing is right there in the name. If I read a bit between the lines, I suspect that what you're really talking about here (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) is a particular pet peeve you have of players purposefully making poor decisions for their characters that lead to setbacks or hardships for the character group as a whole. Which, from a gamist perspective, is understandably obnoxious; after all, if the RPG is a game and the goal of said game is to work together towards some shared objective, then these players are serving as a detriment to the game.

At the same time, one could also make the argument that playing characters without flaws, or who never make mistakes, unless those flaws or those mistakes belong to or are made by the player, strictly because the object of the game is to win the game, is the very definition of meta-gaming also. I wouldn't make that argument, mind you, mostly because I neither think "meta-gaming" is a bad thing nor do I think that everyone is talking about the same thing when they talk about meta-gaming, and that some folks have a tendency to simply use it more as cudgel to describe "behaviors of RPG players I dislike" rather than following any set of coherent and universally agreed upon definition.

I would argue that the best thing for any story in any form of storytelling (whether it be a singular or shared-group experience) is to have characters making the decisions that they are most likely to make, whether those decisions help or hurt towards the character's own goals. I'd also argue that characters making bad but completely in-character decisions is kind of necessary for truly great fiction, but that's neither here nor there. But I do think it's fairly obvious engaging in that behavior is the very definition of role-playing, and I'm not very sure how anyone could possibly begin to make the argument otherwise. I'm just also not going to argue that the reverse is true; you don't have to make mistakes or portray flaws to engage in role-playing or even in good role-playing.

 

[Treantmonklvl20]

If anyone sees you cast Rope Trick, then every enemy within a mile will be waiting for you when you try to leave. It is not subtle. It is a common second-level spell.

I suppose you could say the enemy you were fighting, and was wrecking you so bad you needed to escape into a Rope Trick also had a bunch of reinforcements nearby, and they go and get them, and come back, and then wait for you below the Rope Trick. Well, I guess you were dead either way then.

Personally, if I'm DM'ing, and an encounter goes wrong for the PC's, so that the party is facing TPK, then they come up with a way to successfully escape the battle and recover their assets, I'm usually not thinking, "How can I punish them for this? I know, the enemy has more forces to bring to bear, all nearby!" Maybe that's just me.

If I'm being charitable, then Cure Wounds is the best healing spell that can be cast in combat

No.

(Realistically, it sees less use than Healing Word, and using Healing Word as the baseline reference would make Prayer of Healing seem even more amazing by comparison.)

That you would think Prayer of Healing compares amazingly to Healing Word should be sending alarm bells. Alarm bells that should be telling you that you must be missing something.

And in that case, which is most favorable to your argument, the out-of-combat Prayer of Healing is up to six times as efficient as Cure Wounds spam; it's literally the same amount of healing that you would get from Cure Wounds

In gameplay, Healing Word brings an ally from 0HP to positive HP. It stabalizes them, and brings them back into the combat. This happens to involve the recovery of a tiny number of HP.
Nobody uses Healing Word to bring the 45 HP fighter up to 48 hp.
This is why comparing in-combat healing and out-of-combat healing is something I can't understand the purpose of.
Might as well compare Prayer of Healing to Raise Dead. I know, Prayer of Healing compares AMAZINGLY because Raise Dead only heals 1hp.

Speaking of things I don't understand, why so many italics?].

Why not just handwave it, and say that everyone is healed to full at the end of every combat?

Because the idea is that a party will use resources between combats. If a party member casts Healing Spirit to recover party HP, then they've used up a resource.

If a party member casts Prayer of Healing...wait, nobody ever casts that spell.

It's not like everyone was using Prayer of Healing as a reasonable use of a 2nd level slot, then along came Healing Spirit, so now Prayer of Healing is banished to obscelence. It was already obsolete before Xanathar's. Just like Blade Ward and Witch Bolt and Mordenkainen's Sword.

When you're down to your last few HP, no amount of non-healing resources can help you. In those cases, it makes sense to do an apples-to-apples direct comparison of healing spells, and having one spell that is egregiously superior to every alternative is bad design.

If the (let's say 5th) level party is down to their last few HP, and there isn't an hour for a short rest, but 10 minutes, that's fine. The Fighter is down from 44 hp to 6, and the Barbarian is down from 55 hp to 5 (he went down, brought up with a healing word, whew!), and HP healing is the only answer, then that should be the perfect place for a Prayer of Healing. (See, one italicized word - bigger impact)

Yet, 13 hp on average? Fighter goes to 19hp and the Barbarian to 18. Sorry, the spell failed to do the job. Even when it's supposed to be the perfect solution. Healing Spirit would get them to 41 and 40 respectively, not fully healed, but probably good for another encounter. I guess the game just broke.

You claim the difference in effectiveness of these two spells is bad design. I would agree, but not on the design of Healing Spirit. There are other spells with the same problem that might better illustrate my point.

Here's an example:

Find Traps: 2nd level spell
Druid: I think there is a trap nearby, so I cast Find Traps, using my 2nd level spell slot
DM: There is a trap nearby. You don't know where it is, or what it is, but poison is involved somehow.

Now let's create a new spell that also uses a 2nd level spell. We'll call it Locate and Disarm traps. It does precisely what you would think it does.

Druid: I think there is a trap nearby, so I cast Locate and Disarm traps, using my 2nd level slot.
DM: There was a trap, it was poison darts that would fire out of that statue's eyes. Your spell disabled it. Mark off a 2nd level spell.

Now I would agree with you that having 2 spells of the same level that have such a dramatic difference in effectiveness at the same task is poor design. We are in agreement on that.

Where I'm betting we would disagree is on which spell is the problem.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

There are many activities that fall under the realm of "role-playing" that lack structure, systems, or rules, and consist entirely of a shared storytelling experience, including many LARPs, and role-playing is right there in the name.

I'm going to assume that the quotation marks are there because you actually do understand the difference between role-playing and storytelling. Even if you assume a big tent approach to the hobby, and try to pretend that story games are the same thing as role-playing games in a general sense, the point is irrelevant because we're specifically talking about D&D here.

D&D is a role-playing game by the less-broad definition, where the players make decisions as their characters. D&D is not a storytelling game, where players have any agency whatsoever beyond role-playing their characters; the story is, at best, incidental to the role-playing. I only mention it here, because the poster I had originally quoted had gotten their definitions precisely reversed. The degree by which meta-game thinking should be rejected (as is explicitly called out within the rulebook) is otherwise beyond the purview of this thread.

 

[AmerginLiath]

Reading through this, I wonder if the wrong question is being asked. Instead of munchkinism, I wonder if there’s instead an issue of where 5e’s defenses against power creep (something that occurs in every edition of every game) begin to break down. While there are legitimate arguments about (for example) the ranger, this edition did a good job overall of using its play test process to smooth out the imbalances in how different parts of the game felt — that’s a different issue than “balance” in any mechanical sense, rather a sense that different options each feel like valid choices in their own way. Part of that meant sanding down cool ideas from early on that stood out a bit too strongly in the play test and couldn’t help but be too powerful in their implementation without being rendered incompatible with the vision of the idea.

By comparison, the material in XGtE also went through playtesting via UA (and internal tests), but not in the same complete-game version that the original PHB material did (and not necessarily against all the same material released up until then in other products). That’s something that’s going to happen inevitably at this point in an edition’s release cycle, but it also makes it harder to compare elements to the whole and see whether something interesting in a class is either too strong/weak or too standout/duplicative versus playtesting limited elements within a complete-to-then game. When the result is cool-but-powerful stuff slipping through, that begins the process of “power creep.” We think of 1st Edition’s Unearthed Arcana as a book of powerful editions, but recall that it was mainly a compiled collection of material from Dragon Magazine articles — cool stuff that wasn’t tested against each other either in its day.

I note that people are especially pointing out some of the spells that weren’t in previous UAs, and that’s especially a case where we can see this, because that material especially has gone through fewer channels of comparison. The “problem” as it were is that this material is now all established as extant in the edition canon and will be what new material is tested against. That’s really where power creep comes into play, when the cycle of New and Cool meets Newer and Cooler as the canon further enlarges (consider the rapid enlargement of the 3.5 line and what it’s later classes and subsystems looked like versus the PHB). Since 5e continues to involves open playtesting through UA and the like, it’s key that we as players recognize these structural issues when testing and reviewing material so as to help keep material in line — its how we keep the specter of 6e at bay!

 

[Gradine]

I'm going to assume that the quotation marks are there because you actually do understand the difference between role-playing and storytelling. Even if you assume a big tent approach to the hobby, and try to pretend that story games are the same thing as role-playing games in a general sense, the point is irrelevant because we're specifically talking about D&D here.

Story games, at least those in which players inhabit and act out the actions of their characters, are role-playing games. There are some story games in which who and how many how many of the players have full narrative control is a little (to a lot) less defined, but if you're trying to get me to accept a definition of role-playing game that doesn't include, say, Dresden Files, then I'm afraid you've lost me.

D&D is a role-playing game by the less-broad definition, where the players make decisions as their characters. D&D is not a storytelling game, where players have any agency whatsoever beyond role-playing their characters; the story is, at best, incidental to the role-playing.

And here the onetruewayism rears its ugly head yet again. I appreciate that there are plenty of people who don't care about the storytelling aspects of D&D as a system or any particular campaign in specific. What you are failing to appreciate is that this does not match the experience of everyone who plays D&D; for many people, the idea of collaborative storytelling is the entire appeal of D&D. And while we can have an amusing if utterly pointless argument over the "intention" behind systems and whether some systems serve different functions better (obviously, if I am entertaining the idea that there is even a worthwhile distinction between storytelling games and role-playing games, which I'm not at all sold in, I can agree that there are games and even fantasy games that are better suited towards collaborative storytelling than the current iteration of D&D), and the reason it would be pointless is because we are talking about Dungeons & Dragons, that great progenitor wyrm, with its reputation of being "all things to all people". While there are many great games well-suited to many different styles and aesthetics of gameplay, D&D is still the One Game to Rule Them All. It is the Gateway Game. This is why it's "all things to all people"; because for many people it's the first (and only) RPG, and they've used it to fulfill whatever sort of ends they've needed to.

That said, I don't need to even really debate the philosophy of play aesthetics or the semantics of telling a story versus playing a role, and how the two relate differently to games in general or D&D in specific. I need only crack open the Preface to the 5th Edition Player's Handbook, and let Mike Mearls finish. I'll bold the relevant sections.

Playing D&D is an exercise in collaborative creation. You and your friends create epic stories filled with tension and memorable drama.

D&D may or may not fit any individual's definition of what a "storytelling game" is in relation to a "roleplaying game" (and again, I question the value of such a distinction), but what is not in debate, at all, is the fact that D&D is game about telling stories. The idea that "the story is, at best, incidental to the role-playing" in D&D, as a universal generalization, is demonstrably false. It may not be necessary for you, or the people you play with, and that's totally fine. But you don't have any authority to decide what D&D is or is not, and therefore dictate who is or is not playing the wrong. I don't think anybody has the right to claim that authority. Certainly the person who could come closest to is Mearls, and judging by his preface to the game I daresay he would disagree with you on this particular point.