D&D 5E Are Wizards really all that?

[James Gasik]

Which of course means you need to have an enemy caster to do it. But it's true, the best defense against magic is....more magic, which is kind of the problem in D&D.

Imagine a party of non-casters (or at best, 1/3 casters) securing a room with one door to take a rest, only to open it to find someone had parked a Leomund's Obnoxious Fallout Shelter outside in the hall, ready to ambush them when they tried to leave!

 

[Vaalingrade]

I often wonder what the "you can't take a long rest" parties do when wizards get rope trick and tiny hut?

Respect the players' clear indication that they don't want to engage with being denied Long Rests or random encounters at night?

 

[Garthanos]

I often wonder what the "you can't take a long rest" parties do when wizards get rope trick and tiny hut?

I had a player tell me about a DM that insisted on not getting long rests, so the wizard took tiny hut, so the DM tried to have soldiers line up outside it to ambush... but it is transparent 1 way and you can fire out but not back in... that DM quite because the players just took out bows and took pot shots

There is a point in the advancement story of D&D where certain things which were obstacles at low level are no longer, needing to rest could be one of them like letting martial types recover like they had a short rest after every 2 encounters no actual resting involved with some selectable or even make it useable by others with an Inspired Stamina ability.

 

[Garthanos]

There is a point in the advancement story of D&D where certain things which were obstacles at low level are no longer, needing to rest could be one of them like letting martial types recover like they had a short rest after every 2 encounters no actual resting involved with some selectable or even make it useable by others with an Inspired Stamina ability.

Note tiny hut tells you this could be available as early as level 5, or give a half rest without resting every encounter...

 

[Gammadoodler]

Cast dispel magic. That is the easiest way I know of.

I like to think that dungeons have elaborate constructs or kits specifically made for containing folks in those types of spaces.

Pre-built walls or cages on wheeled platforms that can wheeled around the dome or placed at the rope trick entrance and lowered or jacked up into place or something.

 

[Garthanos]

I like to think that dungeons have elaborate constructs or kits specifically made for containing folks in those types of spaces.

Weird ...

Pre-built walls or cages on wheeled platforms that can wheeled around the dome or placed at the rope trick entrance and lowered or jacked up into place or something.

Also weird and yeh it's DM vs casters... It has the same old issue of demanding changes of the game world because casters are op. But in this case at-least you came up with a nonmagic based thing

 

[Maxperson]

I'd love to see wizards drop down to picking 1 spell per level. Not because of PHENOMINAL COSMIC wizard power! Rather, because in my experience 90% of the spells chosen by various wizards are the same. Dropping 1 spell per would make outside spells, which they can't control, more important and increase the variety of spells that wizards have.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Weird ...

Also weird and yeh it's DM vs casters... It has the same old issue of demanding changes of the game world because casters are op. But in this case at-least you came up with a nonmagic based thing

It's not exactly foolproof or anything. Plenty of spells could bypass such a construct.

In general though, I would expect that, at some point, fantasy worlds would need to have developed countermeasures against common caster exploits, depending on how common casters and their exploits are in the world. And I think it'd be cooler if most of these were mundane, since the folks without magic are generally going to be on the receiving end of such shenanigans.

The trouble is that the number of vectors available to casters for such infiltrations is waaaay higher than it is for mundane martials including the rogue, as good as it is. Blocking physical access to a person-sized creature is not enough, you have to block smaller sized creatures, incorporeal creatures, line of sight, access to information about internal areas, access to names/ personal detritus of anyone who goes inside, access to dead bodies of former occupants..etc.. etc..

And maybe a good DM can find elegant, world-appropriate ways to incorporate such countermeasures without seeming unduly punitive. But, it's damned difficult.

Mostly I expect that you'd find more societal responses. Needing a license to carry a spellbook. Being required to lock up spell focii and materials pouches before entering a town or building etc.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Why is it that archers in hard to reach places, or difficult/dangerous terrain, or invisible opponents, is considered good fun, not "DM against Melee", but anything intended to challenge the casters is "DM against Wizards". There really are so many options for challenging wizards, but people in this thread seem to think that using them is adversarial.

Again, no wonder wizards seem OP to some people.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I can disprove that easily overall concept easily. Here's a thought experiment.

A party of two walk into the woods where they face a broken bridge. Going around would take too long. The first character has two options: magically repair the bridge or they can attempt to jump the gap. Unbeknownst to them, even if the bridge was repaired, their weight would break it again and they'd fall and the character has only a 25% chance of succeeding the jump. The second character has one option: jump the gap. But they have a 75% chance of succeeding.

Character one has more options, yet character two is the only one with good odds on a beneficial outcome.

It is an extreme example, but I only had to disprove the negative.

Let me disprove your example. Character 1 has more than 2 options. Yes, they could magically repair the bridge. They could also cast fly and fly across. They could tie a rope on their end, have their owl familiar fly the other end of the rope across and back again and make a rope bridge. They could misty step across. They could magically repair the bridge and make an Int check to determine if it was solid (potentially with Expertise if a dwarf).

But even all that does not strike me as clever enough. So, I invite the other posters: What kind of clever ways could a wizard bypass a 20’ gorge with a broken bridge?

Character 2 can jump. (I suppose he could also lasso his way across if he is also clever).

The problem with your thought experiment is that it relies on the DM exhaustively setting out all possibilities for success.

But we were assuming an impartial DM. To me, an impartial DM does not favour the solution they came up with over player solutions that are just as likely to work. And clever players are the ones who come up with those outside the box solutions.

It'd be quite the scenario for the enemy to catch the rogue and the rogue is unable to escape. It'd have to be nothing short of knowing the rogue was going to be alone and constructing your dungeon with that in mind.

Off the top of my head, I can think of two examples in Critical Role where a rogue almost died either because they snuck off on their own or they sprung a trap.

Neither of them were one of the most common defense against adventurers: glyph of warding with a thematic spell.