D&D 5E WotC Survey about PHB spells!

[overgeeked]

Egad! Gimme all the weirdo thematic corner case spells that might drive strange solutions to strange problems!

Please for the love of all that’s good and great don’t make it completely formulaic or paired down to some anemic list based on a few folks perceived usefulness.

But! A guide to making spells would also still be cool.

Just let players create their own spells on the fly and include a casting check with each use. If the same spell is cast multiple times in short order, the DC goes up and the chance of a random wild magic...event increases. There's no need for the majority of the spells listed. There presence makes the game formulaic. One person who's good at 5th-grade math analyzes all the spells and declares certain ones good and other ones back, then the majority of players just use the "good" ones whilst ignoring the "bad" ones. Better to force some creativity.

 

[darjr]

@overgeeked good according to whom? And according to what? Damage output? Controlling?

How about that kobold who knows the dungeon and is fascinated by dancing lights?

 

[overgeeked]

@overgeeked good according to whom? And according to what? Damage output? Controlling?

Optimizers. Whatever schema the optimizers are using that week.

 

[darjr]

Done!

I have screen captures of what I got if anyone is interested.

 

[overgeeked]

That took like 15 minutes. Weird slice of spells they asked about.

The "missing" spells must be the % skip after the age question. There was no answer to the age question that didn't result in going from 58% to 99%.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

I took it and provided feedback. I rated many utility spells that require concentration as dissatisfied. I called out Barkskin for just how bad it is in comparison to Mage Armor when it basically fulfills the same function for spell casting druids. I also rated Wish as very dissatisfied because of how bad it is in this edition.

I didn't realize I only got to choose 5 additional spells, so I wasted them on Counterspell, Healing Word, Heal, Mass Heal, and Prayer of Healing.
I regret not spelling out how bad Acid Splash is as a cantrip even further, along with taking to task some of the higher level spells that are just terrible (looking at you Mordenkainen's Sword, and you Weird, and you Astral Projection).

I'm thinking we all get different lists because Eldritch blast and guidance were on my list.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

I took it twice. Apparently, you can take the survey as many times as you like (?), unless there is a cap at some point. But then again, I didn't see any information that would identify users as unique. Maybe it's not that important.

Anyway, I got some new spell groups the second time around, and some that I got the first time. My guess is the entire list has broken into groups of 5 alphabetically, and the groups are randomly selected for each survey. So the same 5 spells grouped with Alarm, for example, will either all show up or not at all. Kinda smart.

Now, if you ask me what good this is for, I don't know. I doubt they are looking for specific feedback en masse since the bulk of this survey will only tell them one thing: which spells are the player base generally happy or unhappy about. Not why. Or why not.

And how am I supposed to respond to any of this? Does magic missile make me happy? I guess. Do I hate it when Bob's new warlock character spams Eldritch Blast just like in every session with every character he plays? Well, that might be a problem with Bob, not the spell. I don't know. I mean, nobody complains if I cast magic missile every day. Do they?

IMO, I think these surveys only serve the most vocal players with the most time on their hands to take these tedious surveys, while everyone else who just enjoy playing the game and not waste time picking every little thing apart could care less.

 

[HammerMan]

Just let players create their own spells on the fly and include a casting check with each use. If the same spell is cast multiple times in short order, the DC goes up and the chance of a random wild magic...event increases.

although not truely D&D per say I made a house rule class in 2e Sorcerer that I used the epic seed rules from the "high level campaigns" book as my base and made you learn seeds based off level then make your own spells... it was fun for like 5 minutes before people just started to back engineer higher level spells then the wizard could cast and put stupid limits on it and have defualt high level slots... I tried to revisit it in 3e with epic level handbook and spellcraft checks but I never really got it to work.

There's no need for the majority of the spells listed. There presence makes the game formulaic. One person who's good at 5th-grade math analyzes all the spells and declares certain ones good and other ones back, then the majority of players just use the "good" ones whilst ignoring the "bad" ones. Better to force some creativity.

and with the internet you don't need to do the work, others have,

 

[el-remmen]

There's no need for the majority of the spells listed. There presence makes the game formulaic. One person who's good at 5th-grade math analyzes all the spells and declares certain ones good and other ones back, then the majority of players just use the "good" ones whilst ignoring the "bad" ones. Better to force some creativity.

I don't know. In my experience, I'd expect a lot more paralysis about making a choice of what to do without definitive spells, and for most players to settle on two or three possibilities anyway even if freeform OR maybe even they'd be MORE likely to look on the internet for "good" spells to make on the fly and rely on those rather than their own imagination because it is "easier" or less stressful than coming up with something on the spot.

Also in my experience, the majority of players in my group never look at the internet for stuff about D&D (unless I am showing it to them) and enjoy the process of figuring out what works for them. The one player I have right now who spends a lot of time in D&D subreddits will tell me about some of the things he reads but usually in one of two forms:

1. Reddit says this spell is a pain to adjudicate and can wreck the game. I was considering taking it, but what do you think? I won't take it if you agree with that assessment.
2. Wow. People on the internet say this spell is worthless, but in this game it seems to be really working out for me because X, Y, Z.

 

[Chryssis]

The spells were a seemingly random selection with each page in alphabetical order. Some classics ie, magic missle, fireball, some garbage ie barkskin, friends,. Took me about 5minutes to go through them but i have a pretty encyclopaedic knowledge of the spells. Didn't really know how to answer the how much have you Dm'd in the last year question since..pandemic, haven't played anything since February 2020 so i just used pre-pandemic year. The completion percent is sectional, ie 1. rate spells\spell use, 2. dm, 3. age, 4. additional spells (y\n), if y 5. detail five. so if after age you say no more spells it skips you to end going to 99% rather than 75ish.