D&D 5E Spellcasters and Balance in 5e: A Poll

[Don Durito]

I'm not sure I've actually seen the three round fights people speak of.

I've seen a few one round fights, but most tend to be more like four or five.

 

[FrogReaver]

Exactly. It's NOT the end all be all of everything.

The things that people tend to forget about casters is that your spells prepared and slots are limited. And if you're a spells known caster, forget about it. You're not preparing every great spell for every eventuality. If you prep the right one for the right situation, you're golden! Forcecage is a fantastic spell. I'm pretty sure I took it for my lore bard a few years back. But if you prep the wrong spells, you suck. You might as well have left a spell unprepared if you prepped Forcecage and you're facing a creature that's too big for it. Moreover, that's a 7th level spell so odds are fairly good you did not prep an alternate, so now your optimal use for that slot is to upcast a lower level spell.

Martials tend to be much more reliable in my experience. They don't really have either the highs or the lows of casters. A caster might end a fight with a single spell. Or they might just stand there throwing cantrips the whole time because they're functionally useless, having prepped the wrong spells. I've rarely seen an encounter where a martial is functionally useless. People often bring up flying monsters, but if you're a martial you should always have a ranged weapon. Less effective is not ineffective.

As for why those high CR monsters don't mess with martials as much as casters, I think it's because high CR monsters have more abilities to counter casters than martials. Teleporting is useful for escaping a Forcecage or closing on a squishy mage. But a lot of these monsters are melee based to begin with so there's rarely much point in teleporting away from the martials (unless it's to go after a squishy caster). This might legitimately indicate that casters are in fact stronger than martials, but unless you're homebrewing the counters out of high CR creatures, they're effectively not.

An optimized wizard in tier 3 won't have those lows you are talking about. They will either meet or exceed the martials because they will have prepared a diverse enough allotment of spells to have something that works well in virtually every situation. (maybe not the best, but well enough to keep them from those lows)

Speaking of martials not having lows - they are much more likely to get screwed than casters. Even simple mechanics like flying or long range attacks can make their lives absolutely misreable.

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't think that is true for most campaigns and it certainly is not true for most published campaigns. Anything above 4 rounds is rare and usually a boss fight, and those typically do not happen on 1-fight days.

2-3 is average. 4 is uncommon. 5 or more is rare. If people in the party are surprised you can bump those numbers by 1, but those people can't act the first turn anyway.

And I still think you are wrong. What does repeating this process over and over again do for anyone?

 

[Maxperson]

The pouch is usually in a a pocket or belt, (i.e. a container). It is not just floating, either it is in his hand I and I cant take it or it is somewhere else on his person and I can try using SOH.

What's the scenario? Are you trying to take it in the middle of combat?

 

[ECMO3]

I made the same ruling for the hand I would have made for the rogue. And this wouldn't be a SOH check. It would be a dex check

So you would not allow an invisible rogue to do a slight of hand check to lift a component pouch even though it says in the PHB a character (who is not invisible) can use a SOH check to do exactly that?

Again, very lenient ruling.

No it is an RAW ruling

Slight of Hand is to take something from someone without being noticed. If the purse was attached to the Woman's belt, the most complicating factor wouldn't be not being noticed, it would be unattaching it from the belt - which is a dex check instead of a SOH check.

The PHB says it is a SOH check to lift a purse.

It wouldn't be any different. He could notice anything floating in the air in front of his face and would typically do so.

He could, except he failed his perception check on that turn. If he keeps the hand there levitating it sure, but that was thee whole point of the SOH check

The non-lenient ruling is: Give me a sneak check to see how well you accomplish that feat.

Stealth makes less sense to me because of the rules regarding being obscured. As you noted the pouch is floating in air, it is not obscured. Slight of hand skill according to the PHB is lederdemain (not to be confused with the AT ability) or trickery. This fits more with misdirection in terms of what we are doing here.

No, you are overpowering the intention.

I think it is pretty clear what is intended and the example is by any measure far easier to accomplish than things it specifically says you can do with the hand.

 

[FrogReaver]

What's the scenario? Are you trying to take it in the middle of combat?

The specific scenario we disagreed on was a component pouch attached to a characters belt and trying to take the whole component pouch with AT Mage Hand mid combat.

 

[Maxperson]

This whole thread is a strawman and your math is wrong.

If you are only fighting once a day using 6 dice is using two dice on every single one of his turns. Actually that is more than two dice on every one of his turns, since most fights last three rounds or less.

The game is balanced for 6-8 encounters per day. If you are only fighting once, you've upset the game balance.

 

[ECMO3]

What's the scenario? Are you trying to take it in the middle of combat?

Typically yes. The rules put no qualifier on combat though and the hand is invisible. The rules also say it can be done with a bonus action, which strongly implies this is primarily for combat because few if any tables keep track of bonus action economy outside of combat. I can't think of a single time a strictly non-combat ability stated it could be done with a bonus action.

If he is holding it, completely different. If I try to steal it once and fail so he holds it from then on, that is legit too. But there is no reason to think a Rogue's mage hand can not be used to try to steal something from someone when the rules say it can be used to steal something from someone.

 

[Maxperson]

My point was you can't kill the person inside the forcecage with a spell as was stated.

I am not saying it is not powerful, it is and unlike many of the things you listed above grants no save makeing it even more powerful.

You absolutely can kill someone in a Forcecage with a spell. All you have to do is use the barred cage option. It's only the solid barrier variant that stops spells into the cage.

 

[ECMO3]

The game is balanced for 6-8 encounters per day. If you are only fighting once, you've upset the game balance.

I agree.