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

[Fanaelialae]

With Wizards, sure, but not with Bards, because they have such a limited spell selection. So we're talking about a fairly small (double-digit but I'd guess below 30%) of groups.

I don't believe that would be true. I think it's much more likely most people just wouldn't care, let alone protest.

I do. "Uncommon" isn't "rare" and something that even say 10% of groups find an issue gets plenty of discussion.

I'm not aware of that being true, or claimed to be true by any of the main D&D designers in 4E or 5E. It seems like something that the 3E design crew might have said though.

EDIT - Also Bards and Wizards are not actually two of the most popular classes - Bards are fairly unpopular and Wizards slightly more so - Dungeons and Dragons - What Are The Most Popular Classes and Subclasses? - they just get a lot of discussion because they have a lot of impact on the game.

I mean, I would expect that a similarly small number of DMs are seriously concerned about being unable to run survival oriented games. I wouldn't even be surprised if a Venn Diagram of the two revealed a remarkable overlap.

I think that practically no one would take LTH in a campaign where survival (including being attacked while resting) isn't a significant factor. Even for a wizard, that would be wasting 1/4th of their guaranteed 3rd level spells. Which is a spell level that has a plethora of great options.

IMO, if players are taking LTH, then it's almost certainly because they want to opt out of survival gameplay. It's not what percentage of players take LTH that's the relevant question (IMO), but rather what percentage of the players who don't like survival mechanics do so in a campaign with survival mechanics (assuming LTH hasn't been banned). And while I have no objective proof on the matter, I suspect that value approaches 100%.

 

[Lanefan]

From my perspective everything has come about because the focus of D&D 5E has changed dramatically from where it was 40 years ago:

Story over game.

Why do people think Tiny Hut breaks "the game"? Because people want to use 5E as the same game they did 40 years ago, where you have resources you have to manage in order to survive long enough to get to where you are going to win your prize (treasure, gold, whatever.) But 5E doesn't care about that "game" all that much. What is truly important is the Story-- where are the PCs going and what are they questing to do and who are they going to meet to accomplish what task? And what slows down that story? Meaningless fights and "random encounters" in the middle of the night by packs of wolves that serve no purpose because resource management is no longer a part of the game. Tiny Hut just allows us to just skip over that unnecessary speedbump that used to be all the rage 40 years ago, but is now a waste of time because it has nothing to do with the story everyone at the table is telling. Where we are go after we wake up is what matters-- rando fights against nameless creatures whose results will be completely wiped away after everyone wakes anyway, isn't.

Darkvision is the same thing-- a way to skip an endlessly repetitive set of "monsters surprise you from the darkness!" attacks because now you can see them more often than not. Isn't that always the clarion call of DMs who complain about the proliferation of Darkvision? That they can't surprise their players anymore? Well from the perspective of Story... the question would be asked "Why are you so desperate to attack your PCs from hiding all the time? Is there a Story reason to do so?" If there was a Story reason to do so... if the narrative of the adventure the party was on was for this to happen... then the DM can add in all manner of special magic / events /rules which could screw up, reduce, or even eliminate the effectiveness of Darkvision this one time in order to emphasize this part of the Story. But that's a special case for this Story-- not something that would be done all the time. And 5E is telling us that if surprising the PCs with hidden monsters doesn't matter as they are traveling through X corridor heading toward the next point in their adventure... then having so many monsters with Darkvision is just pointing that fact out.

And how about the Ranger's ability that specifically prevents the party from "getting lost"? That's there because there are only so many times you can run the "Whoops! You got turned around! Gotta find your way back!" trope before it again just becomes a meaningless speedbump that slows forward progress of the Story of finding the troll warren because they have villagers that are going to die if they aren't rescued.

I know this rubs a lot of past edition players the wrong way... especially those DMs who say "story" comes out of what the PCs do through random excursions and wanderings across an open map, and not an adventure path throughline that the DM has running in the background and which the players will pick up on and probably engage with to campaign completion. But I don't believe that is what 5E is. Here's my honest belief: 5E is not a game built for sandbox play.

It isn't designed to have a handful of characters just going out with a pack of supplies that have to keep track of on "adventures", trying to survive in the wilds, fighting monsters, and looking for treasure. That's a game style of older editions. It's not for 5E. And we can just go down the line of every class feature and spell that does its level best to erase a facet of AD&D "survival game" play. And yet because 5E is the Game Du Jour... people try to use it that way and get constantly annoyed that it doesn't really work to their satisfaction (without a heavy dose of modification.)

But for the rest of us... mostly probably newer players and occasionally older schmucks like me who actually prefer Story-based play and couldn't give a rat's ass about "random encounter tables" or having to detour from the adventure for three days to go look for fresh water because our "waterskins are running low"... having Adventure Path campaigns and an emphasis on Narrative over Game makes 5E our preferred edition. And in that regard... whether you have magic or not doesn't really matter because you can't use magic to skip the Story. The Story takes the availability of magic into account.

All in all, this is a pretty good and well-thought-out summation.

It's also one of the most depressing things I've ever read on this forum.

 

[Micah Sweet]

My own opinion is that it's two highly popular classes, coupled with a few additional outlier options like Ritual Caster. Meaning that the players will probably have the option available to them at 5th level in most campaigns.

If they were uncommon choices, I don't think we'd be seeing the complaints that we're seeing in this thread.

Could it have been implemented in a clearer way, such as everyone agreeing at the beginning of the campaign whether survival will play a significant role in the game? Absolutely. But then this tangent would be all about how virtually no players want to agree to games with a significant survival aspect.

You know what I've noticed? Virtually no players want to agree to games with a significant survival aspect.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes but the 5e method for removing the resource management aspect of the game uses the original in game methods for removal or resource management. Goodberry, Tiny Hut, Magnificent Mansion are all old spells. Some of these spells are as old as the game.

Yes, but in older - as in, pre-3e - versions of the game Goodberry and Tiny Hut were nowhere near as powerful as they are today. (can't speak to MMM as I've never run a party of high enough level to cast it in the field)

I run a 1e-variant game and have for ages; and despite Nature Clerics (our Druids) being a popular and often-played class I honestly can't remember the last time someone cast Goodberry. Same for Tiny Hut, though Rope Trick (a spell I'm taking a very long hard look at with view to nerf or removal) is far more often used in its place.

 

[tetrasodium]

You know what I've noticed? Virtually no players want to agree to games with a significant survival aspect.

It doesn't need to be a full campaign with a "significant survival aspect" for a notable survival aspect to add a great deal when it fits the story. Spells like tiny hut or the outlander ability & such ensure that it can't fit the story until the GM takes away a bunch of player abilities

 

[Ruin Explorer]

IMO, if players are taking LTH, then it's almost certainly because they want to opt out of survival gameplay.

I don't really buy it. You're projecting far too rational and meta-game-y motivations on to players. Seems very far-fetched to me.

My experience is kind of the opposite, even. Players are thoughtless. They don't think about the long-term consequences of things like spell choices at all. Not even slightly. Not even smart players. They think "Oh last time we rested we got rained on a lot, I'll take Tiny Hut as one of my spells!" (assuming a Wizard). They're not thinking "OMG I HATE SURVIVAL GAMEPLAY!!!! I WILL OPT US ALL OUT!!!" (again it's one player's decision too, not the party's). That's just implausible. It's just not how players operate.

I would suspect in fact, there's a large crossover with players who LIKE survival gameplay, or at survival themed atmospherics, and those who (thoughtlessly) take Tiny Hut.

And you are making the same huge error that the other poster was - all this nonsense about "survival-oriented games" is gibberish. It's not what anyone is claiming. We're talking about games where, occasionally, the atmospherics and roleplaying of survival are thing. Tiny Hut destroys that. We're not talking about games where we're constantly counting rations or making CON saves to deal with the cold. Even then, the rational decision would be to take Tiny Hut if available - not to "opt out" of the gamplay, but because it's one of the few tools available.

That's part of the problem. The wildly underdeveloped and overpowered toolset for dealing with exploration issues. Thanks to very different conditions in earlier editions, casters have access to some wildly OP spells which just break the exploration pillar in a lot of ways (many 2nd and 3rd level, almost none higher), which have been retained because "TRADITION!!!" (sung Fiddler-style).

This illustrates a fundamental problem with 5E's tradition-based/apology-edition design. By re-inheriting overpowered tools from earlier editions, and not redesigning them for the new conditions, nor replacing them with more nuanced tools, 5E has created a situation where characters who entire deal with "I'm good at the survival game/exploration pillar!" like certain Rangers are just invalidated by two spells. If 5E was more intelligently designed, more designed from first principles rather than for the sake of TRADITION!!! we wouldn't see stuff like this.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't really buy it. You're projecting far too rational and meta-game-y motivations on to players. Seems very far-fetched to me.

My experience is kind of the opposite, even. Players are thoughtless. They don't think about the long-term consequences of things like spell choices at all. Not even slightly. Not even smart players. They think "Oh last time we rested we got rained on a lot, I'll take Tiny Hut as one of my spells!" (assuming a Wizard). They're not thinking "OMG I HATE SURVIVAL GAMEPLAY!!!! I WILL OPT US ALL OUT!!!" (again it's one player's decision too, not the party's). That's just implausible. It's just not how players operate.

I would suspect in fact, there's a large crossover with players who LIKE survival gameplay, or at survival themed atmospherics, and those who (thoughtlessly) take Tiny Hut.

And you are making the same huge error that the other poster was - all this nonsense about "survival-oriented games" is gibberish. It's not what anyone is claiming. We're talking about games where, occasionally, the atmospherics and roleplaying of survival are thing. Tiny Hut destroys that. We're not talking about games where we're constantly counting rations or making CON saves to deal with the cold. Even then, the rational decision would be to take Tiny Hut if available - not to "opt out" of the gamplay, but because it's one of the few tools available.

That's part of the problem. The wildly underdeveloped and overpowered toolset for dealing with exploration issues. Thanks to very different conditions in earlier editions, casters have access to some wildly OP spells which just break the exploration pillar in a lot of ways (many 2nd and 3rd level, almost none higher), which have been retained because "TRADITION!!!" (sung Fiddler-style).

This illustrates a fundamental problem with 5E's tradition-based/apology-edition design. By re-inheriting overpowered tools from earlier editions, and not redesigning them for the new conditions, nor replacing them with more nuanced tools, 5E has created a situation where characters who entire deal with "I'm good at the survival game/exploration pillar!" like certain Rangers are just invalidated by two spells. If 5E was more intelligently designed, more designed from first principles rather than for the sake of TRADITION!!! we wouldn't see stuff like this.

And the success of 5e tells us that there is virtually no chance of that situation improving. Essentially, the gaming community is getting what it asked for.

 

[Lanefan]

Another part, however, is that people mistake rarity for specialness. They labor under Syndrome's flawed logic from The Incredibles. He claims that, "when everyone is special, no one will be," but he's simply incorrect.

Syndrome in this case was (and still is) absolutely right.

Disparity, along with rarity, is what makes things special; and when everything is on the same level - whatever that level may be - there is no disparity, and thus much less or no special-ness.

This is true of magic, and of characters, and of real-world people.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

H1 Keep on the Shadowfell was the first adventure for 4e, and while the writing itself is pretty grim and has some truck-size holes in it there's a half-decent dungeon crawl in there if one is willing to put a bit of work into augmenting and in some cases rewriting the writing. (I converted and ran this for my group not all that long after it came out)

 

[gorice]

I actually do like the odd bit of bean-counting survival stuff. But, it's a very specific playstyle. What's striking about travel and exploration in 5e is that the rules hamper old-fashioned crawl play just as they do looser ways of framing scenes. We all lose. Except the people who hate trees (and they get enough wins IRL, frankly).

And the success of 5e tells us that there is virtually no chance of that situation improving. Essentially, the gaming community is getting what it asked for.

Honestly, I think WotC painted themselves into a corner by claiming to be all things to all people and letting community feedback take precedence over good design.