In 5e however those archers are no particular threat & that sort of multilayered priorities in combat just doesn't work. The archers need to hit like a truck & ready an action to interrup. Not only that, there is a limit of 1 AoO/round with no meaningful AoO risk for moving around the battlefield.
I have to tell you you are completely wrong here. They are a threat, and a rather serious one. Sure, maybe they can't prevent you from casting, but getting hit by four different archers for 1d6+2 means about 20 damage on average. That's still 1/5 of the average health of a 10th level fighter. A mid-level mage might just drop from that.
Those are all reasons why people called casters squishy, the gm didn't need to hit them with a freight train like 5e to scare them because just getting plinked by an arrow & lmaybe losing their spellslot put the fear of god into them. As a result of that secondary but often more important risk they played up their squishiness & things like ring/bracer/etc of protection mage armor or whatever were super important. Those things stayed super important to them even if they expected to be staying far from the action since any little plink was enough. now in 5ethat plink needs to be a readied siege weapon or something.
The baddies could just ready an action to thwart a caster all the time possibility falls into a similar bucket of "yes maybe you should not have kicked the gm's dog or whatever" bin as "the monsters could completely ignore the tanks & slaughter the squishies if the gm wills it", but it exposes another thing that is missing in 5e. Back in 3.5 ranged attackers didn't need to be especially frightening
(ie skeletons were common for that). Because of the low hit chance, a skeleton could have lessened impact by simple things like mage armor, but spell slots were too precious to risk on a maybe so they party needed to juggle the tactical needs of:
- engaging melee types so squishies didn't get flattened
- deal with those ranged attackers so casters can do their thing if need be
- do it while trying to avoid getting too beat up by AoOs for moving from one threatened square to another. Any monster that complicates that by simply existing like a rust monster or trog can dramatically raise the apparent difficulty without actually doing much to raise the risk
Mages still have low hp and AC, making protection items valuable.
Plink damage still gives you a concentration save, I've seen plenty of people fail the DC 10 check if they are getting attacked enough
Melee still wants to engage archers and deal with the other melee types to prevent them from targeting the back line.
And you still need to be careful about auras, AoO's ect.
Actually. Last night is a good example. My 4th level ranger was in a fight with some new monsters. I followed a group of fleeing monsters past an invisible wall and they turned to attack me. Luckily they missed half their attacks, only reducing me to a single hp.
I could have disengaged and ran, taking no attacks, but then they would have just followed me back out of the wall and finished me. So, I attacked at disadvantage with my bow, hoping to kill the single monster next to me so I could retreat, and hope enough of my allies had come back into the room to deal with the last monster. I had to burn a resource to succeed the roll, because I almost failed.
Now, I'm sure you can tell me all the things I did tactically wrong, all the ways that 3.5 would have been worse and my character would have died. But, it was an intense moment for my character. If I had failed that attack, I would have had to have risked the attack of opportunity. And if it had hit, with most of my allies not having seen the illusory wall, I would have likely died.
In fact, we took quite a few really nasty Attacks of Opportunity last session, because there was always a single monster we couldn't find a better way around. So, there are plenty of threats from AoO still around.
In some ways you are getting hung up on mixing 5e mechanics into 3.5 a example.
I covered it earlier, but the fenemy across the table & the archers don't need to ready an action to pop her if she casts a spell & it doesn't matter if she is casting defensively because...
In short, the fireball does not happen "at the end of her turn".
Regardless of if they act before or after her, they will get a turn before "just before the beginning of [her] turn in the round after [she] began casting the spell."*
That defensive casting check doesn't apply to the frenemy because you can't make an AoO while unarmed (monks & natural weapons aside).
That defensive casting check means that she would not be vulnerable to an AoO simply by casting a spell with a casting time of 1 action or more.
That AoO provoke is why spells that use a swift action were often worthwhile for not triggering an AoO despite lower damage.
Assuming unchecked math you are right about a 75% chance for alice to not trigger an AoO from a stealthed spearwielder "threatening" her on the battlefield if she casts a spell.
The archer plinking at her with a bow because she started to cast a spell needs much more than the defensive casting check though at 10+spell level+damage & her combat casting's +4 does not come into play.
the frenemy across the table was never relying on an AoO to throw the wineglass in her face any more than the archer was & she has no reason to defensively cast that fireball at the frenemy unless she was sitting next to/within 5 feet of someone already armed that was likely to stab her.
In 5e by comparison the frenemy has quite the opportunity cost to ready an action each turn for an interrupt attack if alice starts casting and needs to be capable of hitting her like a freighttrain for more than a dc10 concentration check.
My eyes were swimming for most of that, but let me see if I can tease out some actual points.
Looks like most of it doesn't matter because of the correction post, so I'll just move on to that.
They aren't in conflict as they apply to different things, but the example with alice still runs into problems if she were to cast a more powerful spell with a 1 round cast time like...
antilife shell, Cal Lightning, Dominate animal/person, enthrall, firestorm, insect plague, modify memory, sleep, statue, summon monster & many more.
Things she would obviously never do, so not going to discuss them.
She wouldn't cast "Conjure Elemental" (1 minute cast time in 5e) in the meeting either. Not if she wants a surprise attack
More importantly there is a mechanic the gm can draw from , as soon as alice said "I'm going to cast fireball" they could say "this is a civil meeting you are at, that's going to be a full round casting in order to get your wand readied & body positioned to begin and finish casting so $frenemy is probably going to just interrupt you by throwing his wine glass in your face."
A GM could even houserule that certain spells go from 1 action to 1 round at their table similar to all those threads we saw recently about removing offensive cantrips if they wanted the style of play we accidentally(maybe intentionally?) used back then.
Hmm, that bolded bit is interesting. Seems like you are saying you could houserule it to do what you feel is appropriate anyways.
5e DMs can do that too. Sure, we don't have different styles of casting speeds, but we do have initiative. And I have actually quite often seen a player pull a weapon or cast a spell at a tense negotiation, and then the guards and people we are negotiating with attacking. We then roll Inititiative to see who reacts faster. So, Alice could roll off against the frenemy. If she is faster, then she gets her spell. If the guards are faster, they charge her and start wailing on her with their swords, or shooting her with arrows. (I'm assuming this negotation is with someone important, and there is a reason that no one important goes to a meeting without at least two guards.)
And, we can even rule that her casting in this situation is a held action, so she has to make concentration checks or lose the spell, with the added bonus of knowing that if she wants to target the guards, she needs to target herself too.
And sure, maybe the wine glass won't be enough to break her concentration. Frenemy could just tackle her. But the point is, if you are okay changing the rules of 3.5 to make things less certain, then we can do the same to 5e.
In 5e there are too many safeguards like that & tactical combat/sane flanking & facing rules that were removed and/or defanged to the point of irrelevance & trying to add them back in or just build new ones leads to too many interactions that result in fighting the system like dmg251/252.
The variant rule as written is obviously not even close to filling the needs of someone who wants meaningful tactical combat as garth pointed out
earlier.
Perhaps there was even an original version that did at one point & they noticed the same fear problems he pointed out
earlier but rather than fix fear they stripped the variant's down & gave a half baked set of tactical combat rules.
As I told Garthanos, this is nothing new. Changing rules has always affected other rules. It did in 3.5, it did in 2e, it did in Chainmail, it does in chess, it does in monopoly.
Yes, if you change the rules there will be ripple effects.
So deal with them. Other people have. In fact, I bet if you approached discussions like this with an attitude of "Okay, if I add in everyone getting an AoO every turn, I think it makes sentinel too powerful. Anybody have any thoughts on fixing that part?" or "I want spells to trigger opportunity attacks again, but there should be some exceptions. Do you think that full action melee spells should be exempt, or only bonus action spells?" you would get a much more positive response.
Instead you say "THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FIX, LOOK AT ALL THESE PROBLEMS AND THEY GUTTED 3.5 AND THERE IS NO WAY TO PUT IT BACK TOGETHER" and of course, no one tries to help you, because you are just ranting and declaring it unsalvageable.
It is not effective.
