D&D 5E The Decrease in Desire for Magic in D&D

[Laurefindel]

(...)

I do agree that the lack of effective buff/debuff/control abilities thanks, in large part the weird attitude of "ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING MUST USE CONCENTRATION!!!!!!" is not great design. I think we could stand to see quite a few spells stop being concentration in 1D&D.

If there was just one thing in 1D&D, I'd like it to be a re-adjustment of spells, including concentration/non-concentration. To me, everything else is fine as-is in comparison. Also, modularity on spell lists would be the number one contributor to different genre of fantasy to accompany variant fluff.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Dude.

You are profoundly not getting this, because you seem to want it to be an adversarial thing between the DM and the players. That isn't how most DMs roll.

It's about interesting vs. boring, roleplaying stuff out vs. nothing happening. Tiny Hut means there's never anything to worry about shelter-wise. You're never digging into the snow. You're never finding a cave in the mountains. You're never sleeping a beautiful tree-covered bower.

I'm exactly getting what you are saying. Because you are absolutely right! It IS "interesting vs boring". But here's the thing...

"You're never digging into the snow. You're never finding a cave in the mountains. You're never sleeping a beautiful tree-covered bower."

...is the BORING part. I suspect to a good swathe of the playerbase.

At least it is to me. Because once you do it once... there is little to be gained from the narration of doing it again. And again. And again. Every night.

You know what "finding shelter" is to me? It's looking for pit traps. Yep. That's it. That's all it is. A trope that died out fairly soon in AD&D once players learned their Standard Operating Procedure to carry a 10' pole and tap the ground in front of them every single step of the way in a dungeon crawl. No longer were pit traps cool or fun... they were monotonous. As was the endless searching for them every 5 feet down the corridor. And which is why 5E waved that away too with just putting a Perception skill in the game. To do it quickly and get past it to the interesting parts down the hall.

I do not doubt some people want finding shelter to be a part of their D&D experience. But to get it in 5E is going to require a lot of work on your end. Because it's not really what the game cares about.

 

[Eric V]

Don't recall the press comment, so I can't comment on it myself.

As for the latter, oh, absolutely. Several of the adventures for 4e were absolutely terrible. Particularly the first two major ones. So terrible I would genuinely be willing to believe they were made intentionally bad if I didn't know better. Diehard fans will be the first to tell you that Pyramid of Shadows and...whatever the other first adventure module was, are some of the worst adventures ever written for D&D in general.

Keep on the Shadowfell.

Thunderspire Labyrinth wasn't bad, though.

 

[Mort]

Also, anyone (with Int or Wis 13+) can gain it by taking the Ritual Caster feat and then scribing the spell.

True, and the way backgrounds are being redone, this might be significantly more common. We'll see how ritual caster (and Tiny Hut) look in 2024!.

 

[Laurefindel]

Also, anyone (with Int or Wis 13+) can gain it by taking the Ritual Caster feat and then scribing the spell.

and so does one or two cleric or warlock subclasses IIRC, but it doesn't invalidate the fact that access to Tiny Hut is relatively limited in scope.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I suspect to a good swathe of the playerbase.

I have no reason to believe that to be true. None. No anecdotal or experiential evidence. And the fact that most groups aren't using Tiny Hut really doesn't support the claim.

If it was true, Tiny Hut would be available to all casters, and would be this routine thing that people said "THANK GOD!" about a lot.

But to get it in 5E is going to require a lot of work on your end. Because it's not really what the game cares about.

No? As I've pointed out only two classes even get the spell, and it's a 3rd-level spell, so they're going to have it "spare" routinely until level 7 or higher.

It's absolutely something the game cares about (as much as it cares about anything in the exploration or social pillars, which is a lot less than combat).

Again, if your claim was true, access to the spell would be a lot wider.

Keep on the Shadowfell.

Thunderspire Labyrinth wasn't bad, though.

I dunno man, I'd say Thunderspire Labyrinth was just as bad as Keep on the Shadowfell, particularly in terms of making absolutely zero sense, and it being best to just not think about it (like a bad 1E adventure), but at least the encounter design was a ton better in Labyrinth.

 

[James Gasik]

The only fond memories I have for 4e adventures are some of the LFR mods and Scales of War. I'm told Madness at Gardmore Abbey was fun, but alas, I never got to play it.

 

[Eric V]

I dunno man, I'd say Thunderspire Labyrinth was just as bad as Keep on the Shadowfell, particularly in terms of making absolutely zero sense, and it being best to just not think about it (like a bad 1E adventure), but at least the encounter design was a ton better in Labyrinth.

As a sandbox to project my own story on, I found it good.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I believe so. I'm using Story to mean the narrative. The narrative of the campaign, the series of events that the PCs pursue and accomplish. I'm not talking about character choices or the fluff of a particular class, feature, race, or whatever. Fluff is detail, but it is not narrative. Rangers being able to find shelter is fluff and detail... actually playing out at the table the Ranger and the party going out and looking for shelter, then setting up camp once they find it is narrative.

And while it's cool to play that out that narrative once... few players I would tend to believe would want to play that out at the table every single time they need to camp. I mean look at it this way... if the party is on a quest to march across the barony in 7 days to stop a wedding from happening... do they players want to play out those 7 days of being on the road, marching, eating, drinking, resting, and camping each of those seven days... or do they want to just get to the wedding in order to stop it? What's the story being played out here?

But that's not how any 5E adventure paths really go anymore. Instead there's a story, a narrative, a throughline of events with a beginning, middle, and end, leading towards a conclusion. And in my opinion... the game was designed to facilitate that style of gameplay, rather than your prototypical dungeoncrawling.

To me, that is part of the story, but not the whole story. Part of the Story-emphasis of D&D is about the “Adventure-Path” narrative rather than “old-school dungeon crawling”.

But the other part of the Story emphasis D&D is (1) highly customized characters that operate as avatars for the players; (2) more in depth immersion in exploring those characters (shopping episodes, characters interacting and bouncing off of each other); (3) more open-world adventures -trading 6-8 encounters for an open-ended goal in an urban setting; and (4) a “lived-in” world to deepen immersion.

The argument “LTH, goodberry, comprehend languages” exists to “skip to the good stuff” refers to the first paragraph rather than the second, which is equally part of Story-emphasis gaming.

If I make a character that chooses the Linguist feat, I’m making a statement about my character. That statement is invalidated if scrolls of comprehend languages are commonplace, or everyone in the Plane of Fire speaks common for some reason.

If I make a dwarf, being good at dwarfy things is important, so having easily-accessible magic can undermine that.

I would say that this is fundamentally the issue: widespread magic can invalidate non-magical choices and features of other characters unless the DM ensures that the drawbacks of using magic bite. And very often, doing so either means a number of encounters that is difficult to justify in a Story-emphasis campaign, or restrictions on casters that can themselves feel like the DM is invalidating the caster’s choices.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The argument “LTH, goodberry, comprehend languages” exists to “skip to the good stuff” refers to the first paragraph rather than the second, which is equally part of Story-emphasis gaming.

If I make a character that chooses the Linguist feat, I’m making a statement about my character. That statement is invalidated if scrolls of comprehend languages are commonplace, or everyone in the Plane of Fire speaks common for some reason.

I feel like back in 2E, a lot of this stuff made more sense, because it was so much less accessible/reliable.

Comprehend Languages particularly - there wasn't this weirdly-limited list of languages which we have in 5E - rather, that spell probably got cast to speak a language the PCs had barely even heard of, and that certainly wasn't on a list they could have picked from. Whereas in 5E, it's much more likely you're just casting it when you could have equally selected that language at chargen.

Goodberry you had to memorize. You couldn't just drop a spell slot on it. So you were committed to casting it, it was blocking a slot. It's a breaker in part in 5E because it doesn't block a usage slot, just a selection slot.

Likewise with Tiny Hut - you were committing a slot to casting it, which made it a bigger decision. It also had a bit more nuance to it, in that extreme temperatures and very strong winds impacted it. Plus Tiny Hut the DM had to give you it, and like a lot of spells, that was extremely far from a given.